5 Times Alec Almost Lost His Virginity (and one time)
by oncethrown
Summary: Magnus was older. More experienced. A downworlder. "He has not shied away from the pleasures of every era. His tastes are both exquisite, and quite excessive" Alec stiffened at the voice, Hodge's voice was clear as crystal in his memory. Clave bullshit, Alec told himself sharply. What could the Clave possibly know about pleasure?
1. One: Brooklyn:Twenty One Years Old

**Brooklyn: Twenty- One Years Old**

 _For you? I'll clear my schedule._

 _Okay. How about that place you suggested before?_

 _The Ethiopian Place on 44_ _th_ _street?_

 _Oh. What is Ethiopian food like?_

Alec looked down at his phone. For the last few minutes, the ellipsis that showed Magnus typing back to him had come up immediately after every one of Alec's texts, but it wasn't coming up right now.

He glanced around his room while he waited. He really should clean. He always felt more relaxed when he came home to a clean room. Things had just been so hectic lately.

Jocelyn Fairchild was awake, Jace was gone, and the Inquisitor had come back from Idris to question all of them since Idris now thought the Lightwoods might be spies for Valentine. After all, Robert and Maryse were ex-Circle members who had taken in Valentine's son, daughter, and now his wife.

The ellipsis came up again.

 _Life is an adventure, Alexander._

Alec laughed.

 _Fair enough. Can we meet there at 7:00?_

 _Absolutely not. I cannot be expected to get ready for our first date in 1 hour. I could meet you at the Institute at 8:00 and portal us to the restaurant from there?_

Alec sighed. He had been hoping to avoid this for longer.

 _It would really be better for everyone if you weren't seen at the Institute right now._

 _I understand. I'll meet you at the restaurant at 8:00._

 _Looking forward to it._

 _Me too. I'll text you the address._

Alec tossed down phone down on his bed and flopped backward. Yes! He had finally, officially, asked Magnus out. They were going to go eat mysterious food and most importantly, they were going to do it far away from here.

What the fuck was he going to wear?

He got up and walked to the space in front of his bed, where he could see himself in the full-length mirror hung on the back of his door.

Black hair. Black tee shirt. Black pants. Black boots.

That was certainly what he looked like.

But… on a date. He should look different on a date.

"Relax, Alec," He said to himself. "You've been on a date before."

Sure. If you counted a picnic in Idris when he was 15, or one dinner with his fiancé before he left her at the altar.

Whatever. Clothes weren't his thing.

But they _were_ Isabelle's thing.

He set his phone on silent, shoved it into his back pocket, and then he opened his door very, very slowly.

There was no yelling tonight. That was a good sign. He pushed the door open a little further and was just about to open it when he heard footsteps.

Shit.

He waited, listening hard. Whoever was walking down his hallway was wearing heels, which was not hugely helpful. Everyone he was looking for, or currently desperate to avoid, could be wearing heels.

He saw a flash of orange just before the click of heels stopped.

"Alec?"

He opened the door the rest of the way. "Hey, Clary."

"I was just looking for you."

He nodded. "Oh. I was just going to go see Isabelle."

"I just helped Isabelle get out of the Institute. I think she went to go see Meliorn."

"Why do you think she went to see Meliorn?"

Clary sucked her bottom lip into her mouth. "You know… as her brother you probably don't want me to answer that."

Alec sighed. "Right. Okay. Good instinct."

"Can I come in? Before anyone sees me?"

Alec opened his door, waved her in and closed it behind her. "What do you need?"

"I need to not feel like a prisoner."

"You're free to come and go," Alec said. "You're just like me right now. Not really enough of a Shadowhunter to worry about."

"I tried to meet up with Simon yesterday. Someone from the Institute followed me. I ended up calling him to tell him that we couldn't meet and spent an hour just wandering around Manhattan, practicing shaking my shadow off. Which I'm not good at, by the way."

Alec resisted the urge to roll his eyes. He didn't want Clary to think it was about her when really it was about the Clave. They had no leads, they'd royally fucked up, and their reaction was to spy on and terrorize the New York Institute, which was full of the people Valentine had hurt the most, just so they could say they were doing something.

"So what? It's not like you and Simon are doing any clandestine Valentine related nonsense." It occurred to him that a wild card like Clary could be doing that very thing. " _Right?_ "

Clary shot him a nasty look. "No. We aren't. But look at how the Clave treated Meliorn before Izzy's trial. A lot of people who are important to me are downworlders. I don't want to lead the Clave to Simon. Or Luke."

"The Clave should know where Luke is. He's an important ally to the New York Institute and we're all supposed to be on good terms with him."

"Like we're all on good terms with our friendly neighborhood warlock?" Clary shot back. "They don't know where Luke's personal residence is. There are a few things I want to pick up. And it would be amazing to just get away from this place right now."

Alec evaluated his options. Clary was right. The way they were all being treated was completely unfair. And he didn't currently feel like he owed the Clave, or his parents, jack shit.

"Okay. Look," he said. "There's a way of getting in and out of the Institute without using the front door and I will show it to you, on three conditions."

Clary narrowed her eyes at him. "So why didn't Izzy use it? I just had to pretend I didn't know the difference between a heat rune and a speed rune to create a diversion for her. The table was still on fire when I got sent out of the room."

"Izzy doesn't know about it. Only Jace and I do."

"Conditions?"

Alec held up his index finger. "The vampire doesn't find out about it."

Clary scowled but nodded.

"You never, ever risk using it when there is even the slightest chance someone might see you. You keep it a secret from everyone."

"And condition three?"

Alec pursed his lips. "Izzy's really gone?"

"Yeah, Alec. She's really gone."

Alec dropped his head back and sighed before looking at her again. "How do I look?"

Clary's forehead wrinkled and her brows furrowed inward until they touched. "I don't know. Tall."

"I have a date tonight," Alec growled. "Magnus said he needed two hours to get ready. I don't know what to wear."

A slow grin spread across Clary's face. "You want me to help you pick out clothes for your date? Do you actually own anything besides black tee shirts?"

"A couple things." Alec pointed to the corner of the room. "The closet's open. Make a joke about that and I will trap you in the secret passageway and leave you there to die."

Clary laughed, went to his closet and start pawing through it. "What kind of restaurant is it?"

"Ethiopian."

"No, like is it a hole in the wall, sit down, high on the Zagat guide? What is the vibe?"

Alec gulped. "I did not understand anything you just said to me."

"Whatever. Google the address."

Clary came over with a few shirts just as google populated a search for the restaurant. Alec handed Clary his phone.

"Okay. So it's a casual place. You don't have to worry about a dress code or anything."

"Magnus is not going to be dressed casually."

"Magnus knows that 95% of your wardrobe is black tee shirts and still likes you," Clary replied. "Here." She laid the three shirts she'd retrieved from his closet out on the bed. His denim shirt, a sweater that was mostly black but sort of had a dark blue pattern on it, and a bright blue dress shirt. The three things he owned that Izzy had bought for him. Not exactly a confidence booster.

"I grabbed this because it's the only actual color in your entire wardrobe."

"Izzy got it for me."

"Of course. Well. If you want to look fashionable, I'd go with the denim. If you want to look… basically like you always do, but you're like, finally trying, wear the sweater, and if you want to shock him go with the bright blue. Can you show me the passageway on your way out?"

"I'm going out the front door."

"I'm not setting another table on fire."

"I'm not under that much suspicion. I can't be loyal to Valentine and in Magnus Bane's thrall."

Clary frowned. "Jesus. Did you mother really say that to you?"

"She hasn't talked to me in a week. The Inquisitor said that. Sneered, really."

"I'm sorry, Alec."

He shrugged. "Whatever. I knew this was coming." He looked at the shirts Clary had laid out on his bed. "Thank you. For helping me."

Clary nodded. "Are you coming back to the Institute tonight or staying at his loft?"

"You and I are not having that conversation."

"Right. Okay." Clary stood up and walked to the door. She stopped and turned back to him. "Alec? I would really like it if we could be friends."

"Yeah, well. Baby steps," he told her. But he smiled and she smiled back before she left.

It was going to take some time to get used to Clary Fray being part of his life.

* * *

Ethiopian food was good. The big spongey bread that it was served with had a weird texture that Alec wasn't a huge fan of, but everything else was spicy and flavorful. The booth was private and comfortable. The music was strange and upbeat. The company was beyond compare.

And the conversation was… ongoing.

"I don't like action movies," Alec repeated with a shrug.

Magnus laughed. "Alexander, _even I_ have seen Star Wars. It was such a grand event, I convinced Ragnor to see it in the theaters."

"In the seventies?"

"Yes!" Magnus replied. He waved his arms dramatically as he spoke and his shirt's wide, dark red silky sleeves waved like wings. Alec wasn't sure, but Magnus actually seemed to be dressed down a little bit. His hair was all black, combed to the side and back instead of up over his head. He was wearing glittery black eye makeup, but not… like a lot of it. He'd complimented the shirt Alec had picked from the options Clary had set out for him. The denim one.

"At the time it was very exciting." Magnus's hands came down to the same place they'd been most of the evening— resting on the table top, a couple inches from Alec's. Alec kept waiting for Magnus to do something about that space between them. Tuck his fingers into Alec's palm, or set his hand over Alec's. Magnus never seemed to touch him. Alec had noticed that before… but shouldn't tonight be different?

Alec _felt_ different. Everyone knew now. Only Jace, Izzy, Clary (and the vampire, for some reason) were happy for him, but the weight off his shoulders was still immeasurable. He didn't feel guilty about being out with Magnus at all. Anyone could see them here. Anyone who saw them would assume it was a date. _And he didn't care._

And, most amazingly, he hadn't lied to anyone about where he was, or who he was seeing. This wasn't like when he was 15 and forever making up excuses for why no one had been able to find him and Edward Whitelaw when they weren't at their training. Or even like the last few months with Magnus, pretending every phone call portended urgent magical business when he knew damn well that Magnus was just making up excuses to talk to him.

Tomorrow, if anyone asked him where he had been, he wasn't going to lie about it, like he had a couple years ago when he'd flipped out after a mission and gotten drunk in a mundane gay bar. He'd just tell them. He'd had a date. A really excellent date.

Alec shrugged again. "I don't like action movies."

"Why not?"

"They're never realistic," Alec answered, grabbing his wine glass and tipping back the last little bit of red liquid at the bottom. "The fighting is ridiculous, the mundanes in them make ridiculous decisions that no one would ever make, and the last like… five I've heard about everyone just fell in love with a vampire. Gross." Alec realized what he'd said a little too late and cleared his throat. "Sorry… I didn't mean—"

"— It's fine," Magnus said with a dismissive wave. "There are plenty of days when I think the same thing."

"Okay."

The conversation up to this point had been fluid and easily and it stung to stumble so badly as they wrapped up such a nice meal. He and Magnus hadn't talked about Camille at all in the week since Jocelyn Fairchild had been woken up. Alec could accept Magnus at his word that Camille had been an important part of his life and now she wasn't. Magnus was over three hundred years old. Alec didn't expect to be his first anything. It wasn't like Alec was coming into this relationship as a blank slate either.

Across the couple of inches of table top between their hands, Magnus's fingers twitched to life. He started running one of his fingertips up and down a groove between the wooden slats.

"So you don't like action movies, you don't like comedies. What kind of movies do you like?" Magnus asked.

The waiter came back with their check. Alec reached for it, but Magnus snatched it before he got there.

"I insist," he said when Alec tried to protest.

He tucked a few bills into the black vinyl envelope, set it aside and returned his hand to the same place it had been before. Alec watched it move.

"Alec?"

"Uh," Alec snapped back to the topic. "I don't really know. I haven't seen a lot of movies. Shadowhunters are more into books. Studying. Training."

"Right," Magnus smiled. "Maybe we could find a movie that peaks your interest some time. I don't think I've been to a movie theater in…" Magnus looked to the side, eyes narrowed in thought. "At least thirty years."

"Yeah. Okay. I'd like that."

A small, warm silence fell between them. Magnus's chest rose and fell, causing shimmers along his shirt before he asked, "Would you like to come back to the loft for a night cap?"

"Yeah," Alec answered softly.

They slid out of the high-backed booth they'd been hidden away in for the last couple hours and walked out the front door into a pleasantly cool, dry evening.

"We could duck into the alley and I could portal us back. It's too far to walk."

"Can we walk couple blocks and then portal?" Alec asked. "I could use the fresh air."

"Of course."

They walked away from the setting sun since the direction they went didn't really matter. After a full minute of second guessing himself, Alec reached out and caught Magnus's hand in his own at the second intersection they came to.

Magnus looked up at him, and Alec could tell that he'd surprised the warlock again. He felt that warm glow in his chest he got so often around Magnus.

This had a price tag. Alec was paying it now, and he knew he'd be paying it for a while, maybe for the rest of his life, but right now, standing hand in hand with Magnus on a New York City street corner where no one was even slowing down for a second glance at them, it felt simple.

* * *

Back at Magnus's loft, he and Alec settled into the couch, and Magnus conjured them each a glass of red wine.

"So. You've been avoiding the topic for the duration of our lovely evening. How is the Institute?"

"Still standing."

"Alec."

Alec looked down into his wine glass. Magnus had turned the lights in the loft down low, and the wine was dark. Alec could see his reflection on the surface of the liquid.

"It's bad," he answered. "Like, it's uncharted territory bad."

"I'm sorry."

"It's not your fault. But I really want to be away from it for a night, okay. Can we just change the subject?"

Magnus held his hands out, palms up. "To anything in the world you'd like to talk about."

The wine Magnus had conjured was rich and sweet and much, much better than the wine at the restaurant had been. There was a fire crackling in the hearth. Magnus was lounging only a few inches away.

And they'd kissed now.

And they'd finally been on a date.

And Alec was feeling warm and happy and… daring. Maybe even a little wild.

"Okay," Alec said. He moved his wine glass from his right hand to his left and took another drink. "I want to know why, in the months you spent flirting with me, and calling me, and staring at me, and making up reasons to see me, you never touched me?" He punctuated his question by pressing the tip of his index finger into Magnus's knee.

Alec saw that way that Magnus's adam's apple dipped before Magnus scraped his teeth over his bottom lip. He certainly had Magnus's attention.

"I didn't want to coerce you with my raw, animal magnetism," Magnus answered, with a grin. "I was trying to play fair."

"Riiigghhtt," Alec replied, he pressed a second finger into Magnus's knee. "Try again."

Magnus laughed and leaned forward. "I'm old, Alec. When I was your age if you touched the wrong person in public church elders would just swarm you and perform a marriage right then and there."

Alec laughed so hard he snorted at that, which he felt compromised the in-charge and sexy vibe he'd been working toward. He pressed a third finger into Magnus's knee. "Try again."

Magnus paused, then took a long drink from his wine glass. His tone was much more serious when he spoke again. "I wasn't sure you'd let me."

Alec nodded, and pressed a last finger against Magnus's knee. They both looked down at the small space between them. Alec wondered if Magnus could hear Alec's heart throbbing in his chest.

Swallowing hard, Alec leaned, over plucked Magnus's wine glass out of his hand, then set both glasses on the coffee table, and his palms over Magnus's knees.

"You can touch me."

Magnus looked stunned for a brief moment, then caught Alex by the back of the neck and pulled him into a searing kiss. It wasn't quite like the one at that wedding, desperate and hot and hungry, but that was okay, better probably. It didn't have to be manic and intense this time. This one was just a warm up. They were going to keep going.

Alec leaned back, pulling Magnus with him, and after quickly sort their legs out, Alec had Magnus's body pressing down against his own, and they were making out.

His surprise at how easy it had been to get Magnus to kiss him again was about equal to his worry about what happened next. It wasn't like he'd never done more than make out— but this was different.

Magnus was older. More experienced. A downworlder.

And they were alone. They didn't have to hide or hold back. They could do absolutely anything tonight. Anything at all. Overcome with possiblity, Alec caught Magnus's bottom lip between his teeth and bit down very gently. It was enough to make Magnus growl and press down harder against him.

Without breaking the increasingly sloppy kissing, Magnus slid his hand underneath Alec's knee and gently moved Alec's leg out and up, then pressed his own body down against Alec's, tighter than before. Desire surged up in Alec a sharp, quick moan fell from his lips.

"He has not shied away from the pleasures of every era. His tastes are both exquisite, and quite excessive"

Alec stiffened at the voice, Hodges voice was clear as crystal in his memory.

 _Clave bullshit,_ Alec told himself sharply. _What could the Clave possibly know about pleasure?_

"Alec?" Magnus asked. "Are you alright?"

 _And they don't know him like I do._

"Yeah," Alec replied. He was already out of breath.

Magnus hung over him, watching his face. A big vein was pulsing in his forehead. "Maybe we should go to bed."

 _Yes_ , Alec thought immediately. Part of him, somewhere, almost wanted to say no. He hadn't told anyone at the Institute that he wasn't coming back. The Inquisitor was going to pitch a fit in the morning if no one knew where he was. His mother was going to go easily another two weeks without speaking to him if he waltzed into one of the Inquisitor's meltdowns after having spent the night with _that warlock._

 _Too fucking bad._

"Okay, yeah."

Magnus smiled, dove in for one more kiss then pulled back, his hand extended out to Alec. Alec took it, allowing Magnus to help him up off the couch and guide him down the hallway off the the side of loft. He'd been down this hallway before. After he'd helped Magnus heal Luke Garroway, they'd stayed up way too late having a drink. And a second drink. Magnus had let him stay in the guest room. Last door the left.

Magnus opened the first door on the right and pulled Alec in after him.

When he'd stayed here before, Alec had thought the guest bedroom, with it's embroidered red silk duvet and satin sheets and four poster bed, had been almost ridiculously rich.

Magnus's bedroom made the guest bedroom look like a toolshed.

Warm sconce lighting along the walls illuminated cathedral ceilings, another four poster, king sized bed, this one hung with midnight blue silk curtains. The room had a fire place and a balcony. An old fashioned, beautifully carved desk was tucked into a corner. Carefully arranged shelves along the wall displayed a few vases of orchids, old books and silver framed, black and white photographs. Magnus pulled Alec a few steps further into the room, far enough to feel the ground under his feet change from cool stone to soft carpet.

Magnus let go of Alec's hand walked to the bed. He carefully folded back the top few blankets, revealing midnight blue satin sheets underneath, then came back and set one hand at Alec's waist.

"I'm going to go clean up. Make yourself comfortable."

Alec bent over to kiss Magnus again.

It didn't occur to Alec that the last few minutes had been a little strange until Magnus was already gone.

A few minutes ago they had been making out on the couch, pressed together up and down the full length of their bodies, heat building between them… and now Alec was _alone_ in Magnus's bedroom.

While Magnus… cleaned up.

Alec took a deep breath. This had been a really good night. Looking over at Magnus's bed, the covers turned down, inviting him to lay down, Alec was sure the night was going to get better.

In fact, he was going to make sure it was. He walked to Magnus's bed, pulled off his tee shirt, unbuckled his belt, undid his fly and pulled his pants off. He stuck his thumbs into the waistband of his boxers and paused, but the moment of hesitation passed quickly He pulled those off too.

Naked, and still mostly hard, he laid down in the space Magnus had set aside for him.

For months, he'd been forcing himself not to think about this. About the way Magnus's hands moved when he did magic, or the way he moved through the world with total confidence, total grace. The way the glitter around his eyes sparkled when he laughed. About the way Alec knew Magnus wanted him, and how it felt to know that. Right now, at the end one of the hardest weeks of his life, he felt happy and peaceful, because of Magnus.

If Magnus wanted Alec, he could have him.

Alec watched the door, tensing with anticipation at every little sound until finally, the door swung back open and Magnus walked through it.

Seeing Magnus gave Alec felt the same tingling leaden feeling in his stomach that he got from jumping from a great height, or ducking a sword blow at the last minute. It was the same rush.

Magnus wasn't wearing any make up. At all. His hair was flat and glossy black. All his ethereal, other worldly pomp and circumstance was stripped away.

He looked devastatingly human.

He also looked pretty taken aback.

Alec finally noticed that Magnus was wearing pajamas. The fabric was the same as the sheets. Loose fitting pants under a tunic that came down to Magnus's mid thigh.

Alec finally breathed, and slid a couple inches down the pillows behind him. "Hey."

Magnus's eyebrows slowly lowered. "Hey."

He crossed the wide expanse of expensive rug with his arms raised up near his chest, circled around to the other side of the bed and sat down on top of the covers. "Alexander," he started, then paused. He picked up the blankets and pulled them back up, covering Alec from the waist down.

"Alexander," he started again. "In hindsight, I can see where what I said about going to bed was misleading." He pressed a hand to his chest. " _Mea culpa…_ but I'm not going to have sex with you on a first date."

Blood rushed into Alec's face. "Oh…" He looked away from Magnus, his hold body tensing up. "I uh… you…you paid for dinner and… invited me here… and asked me to stay," he managed.

"Yes," Magnus said. He set his hand over Alec's where he was nervously knotting the blanket between his fingers. "Because I don't get paid what the Clave calls a salary, and I wanted to spend the evening with you, and I know how bad things are at the Institute. I thought you'd want to be away from all of that for a while. But you don't… owe me."

Alec shakes his head and, cheeks still burning, fights his way on top of the embarrassment. "I know that. That's not what this is."

"Alright," Magnus replies. "What about when we said we'd slow things down?"

"We did," Alec said, now overwhelmingly aware that Magnus's whole body was covered and his own was not. "Everyone was jumping down our throats about… love and romance movies and what we were thinking. We slowed down. We planned a date. We went on a date." He pressed his hand over his face. "Fuck. Okay. I just… I figured you would want to… you know. Go there."

He felt Magnus's hand close around his wrist, and let Magnus pull his hand away from his face. "Don't be embarrassed. It's fine. Why don't you go wash all this stuff out of your hair, and come back." He snapped his fingers with a flourish. "There are pajamas in the top drawer, right side of the sink."

Alec looked at Magnus's hand where it was still gently circle around his wrist. "Jace told me what you said. When you were trying to heal Luke and you told him that you needed me because of my Virgin Shadowhunter Energy?"

Magnus had the decency to look embarrassed. "There's no such thing as Virgin Shadowhunter Energy. I just couldn't use Jace or Clary's energy and didn't have time to explain why."

Alec's stomach twisted uncomfortably. "You don't think I'm completely innocent, right? That's not part of my appeal to you? Cause it's not true."

Magnus smiled and laughed gently, letting go of Alec's arm. "Alec, I don't care about any of that. That's not what this is about."

"Okay. What is this about?"

Magnus's smile faded slowly. He licked his lips and looked down at his hands for a second before turning back to Alec with a very rigid look. "Optimism," he finally answered. "I don't want to have sex with you now, because I want to have sex with you at some perfect moment, out in the future. After a lot of dates, and a lot of long, slow conversations over good food, and good drinks. After you've stayed here enough times to know where the towels and the cups are. After you've seen me," he waved a hand at his bare face and flat hair, "Like this enough times that you aren't surprised anymore."

"Oh," Alec replied. It was hard not to like the picture Magnus was painting. One where this wasn't his first time in Magnus's bedroom. Where he knew Magnus enough that he could read his tone and his expression easily. Where they could read each other well enough that this sort of misunderstanding didn't happen. "Okay. Yes. I'd… I'd like that too."

"Okay." Magnus kissed him once, gently. "Go. Take a shower. It's a rainfall shower. It's heavenly. I'll be here when you get back."

"Alright," Alec agreed. He shifted to get out of bed and stopped. "You magicked the pajamas into the bathroom. I'm still naked."

Magnus grinned and nodded. "Oh, I know. I'm going to watch you walk away."

Alec snorted and threw the covers back off of himself and over Magnus's head.


	2. Two:The Bronx: Seventeen Years Old

**The Bronx: Seventeen Years Old**

Isabelle's phone went off, and it was the last goddamn straw tonight. Alec rounded on her.

"Are you fucking kidding, Izzy?" he demanded, pushing himself into her space.

She didn't back down, not even an inch. Instead, she pulled her buzzing phone out from between her breasts and answered it, staring defiantly at Alec all the while. "Hey there, Reynaldo."

"Izzy!" Alec huffed. "Why are we even bothering with the invisibility runes if you aren't going to silence your fu-"

Jace grabbed him around the bicep and pulled him away from his sister. "Hey, calm down."

"We are on a mission. She can't have her phone on during a mission," Alec growled.

"Yeah, we're just finishing up here," Izzy said it into the phone, but it was clearly directed at Alec. "Everything wrapped up and taken care of. I could meet you at Taki's in twenty minutes if you don't mind me showing up in my gear." She laughed and leered into the phone. "I thought you might say that."

Jace kept his hand tight around Alec's bicep as he leaned over and swatted Izzy gently on the forearm. "Hey, don't go to Taki's."

"Just a second, babe." She set the phone against her shoulder. "Why not?"

"I've got a date with that faerie girl tonight. Kaeli. _We're_ meeting at Taki's."

Alec's anger, burning hot, suddenly turned frozen. "You… You have a what?"

Jace looked back at him. "A date."

"A date," Alec repeated dumbly.

"So why I can't we both have a date at Taki's?" Isabelle demanded. "Where else am I supposed to take Reynaldo for dinner?"

"Anywhere, Izzy. Kaeli can only go to Taki's. She's green. She has green skin."

"Oh, yeah, that girl," Izzy nodded. "She's pretty, Jace. I want to hear more about this later. But Reynaldo is a vampire. There's nowhere else in the city that's going to serve him blood. We'll just sit in different sections. They pull the curtains down at night. You won't even know we're there."

Jace sighed, but agreed. Izzy confirmed her plans with Reynaldo, hung up and tucked her phone back into her bra.

Alec's momentarily dulled anger flared instantly back up. "You are both blowing off a mission debrief to go… smooch downworlders?"

It was a poor choice of words. He knew that as soon as he closed his mouth. He was tired and angry and had just been dealt a pretty serious shock. Jace had never, _ever,_ shown any interest in a girl.

Izzy's laugh was a lot meaner than Alec thought was necessary. Jace's was only a little more understanding.

"Mom only needs one person at the debrief," Izzy told him brightly. She linked arms with Jace. "And since we both have plans…"

They both gave him pleading smiles.

Alec glowered at both of them, then turned and walked away.

"Thank you, Alec," they chorused after him.

He didn't reply.

He started going back to the Institute, but stopped. Why was he trudging home alone to do their work for them? He was just going to end up covering for them. Lying for them. Their parents were quietly ignoring Izzy's rebellious phase, but they would expect better from Jace.

They only wanted the best for Jace.

Alec turned a corner, making sure he was out of view of Jace and Izzy before he called his mother. Plenty of the other Shadowhunters at the Institute debriefed by phone. There was no rule against it. He quickly described the mission for her. Two Dahak demons, an easy kill, more pest control than a real mission.

"No injuries?" she asked. "No collateral damage?"

"No," Alec answered.

"And you're on your way home." It was a statement, not a question, said with such confidence that Alec almost complied. But he was still angry. Fuck Izzy and Jace. His purpose in life wasn't covering for them. He could be rebellious too.

"Actually we were all going to go out for dinner."

"Really? It's late."

"Yeah… um… we're starving though," Alec said. All things considered, he should have been a better liar. Maybe people had limits and the big lies screwed up your ability to tell the little ones.

His mother laughed. "Of course. What am I thinking wondering why a couple seventeen-year-old boys need a second dinner. Okay. Good night."

"Good night," Alec said.

Fine. So he had covered for Izzy and Jace. It was only because it suited his purposes. Next time he wouldn't. Next time he would blow them off, and let them twist.

He walked down the street. Pandemonium wasn't that far away. Jace and Izzy weren't the only ones who could pick up downworlders.

He stopped walking after two blocks. Pandemonium had a certain type of clientele. It was where downworlders and mundanes who wore too much make up went. But plenty of clubs catered to… niches. Why not go to a more _specific_ type of club?

He pulled his phone out, opened up Google maps, and tapped out a few words he had never had the nerve to search before.

* * *

When you properly applied your invisibility runes, and left your phone on silent, and didn't bring attention to yourself, _like they had all been trained to do_ , getting into a club underage was a piece of cake. Alec had simply hopped the waist high railing behind the bouncer and walked in the front door. He even managed to slip his jacket, bow, and quiver into the coat check, completely undetected.

The music inside was abrasively loud and completely obnoxious. If it weren't for the anger still coursing through him (and the image of Jace having a lovely dinner with a lovely green girl), Alec might have given up and turned around.

But not tonight. Tonight he was going to rebel, goddammit. He was going to be selfish and irresponsible just like everyone else.

But first— reconnaissance. He was a rebel. Not an idiot.

He crept around the club for about fifteen minutes, his invisibility rune still intact. There were different floors, each with different music, and different types of people. The floor he'd first walked onto was blasting harsh, electronic music, while shirtless young men, a lot of them with glow-in-the-dark paint on their lithe bodies, bounced around to it in the darkness.

The second floor actually had regular lights on, and was playing pop music at a volume you could be heard over if you shouted. The guys on this floor were fully clothed, and all of them looked like what Alec pictured when he imagined mundane boys. Jeans. Plaid shirts. Short hair. There were girls on this floor, but none of them seemed to be dancing with the other girls.

The last floor was even more confusing. It was also mostly dark, with some blue and green lighting just barely alleviating the darkness. Screaming heavy metal was playing. There were no women anywhere on this floor and the men that were grinding against each other here were wearing just as much black leather as Alec was, but in very different ways.

Alec paused. Maybe this is what he wanted. His rune for night vision was still operating. He could see what these men were doing to each other out on the dance floor. Maybe he'd come here to get groped and kissed and pressed up against a wall. Maybe that was all he fucking wanted tonight.

But maybe he didn't want to do those things in a crowded room, and maybe he wanted that sort of attention from a guy who was at least 20 years younger than the average guy up here.

He went back downstairs. The second floor seemed the most innocuous, but he didn't really understand what was going on here. No one really seemed to be dancing together, and there really were _a lot_ of girls. Maybe this floor didn't even cater to… men like him.

He went back to the first floor, and kept observing. It only took about two songs to discern a pattern. Men out on the floor danced until the song changed. At every song change a significant amount of men went to the bar, they talked and touched each other and went back out on the floor together.

Okay then.

Alec backed up against one of the walls, where it was darkest, pulled out his stele and undid his invisibility rune. For a moment, he considered casting a glamour to hide his Marks, but most of the men in this room had tattoos. He'd hardly stick out. Besides. No one in here knew what Marks were.

The bartender passed him a menu as he sat down and mimed taking a drink out of a glass. It was too loud for anything else.

Alec looked at the menu. He didn't know what anything on it was so he just pointed to something at random and ended up ordering a "Long Island Ice Tea".

It came in a tall glass with a lot of ice. It was like drinking electric sugar, but Alec didn't care.

How in the hell had Jace ended up on a date with a Seelie girl?

Plenty of Shadowhunters hated downworlders, despite the accords. Alec wasn't one of them. Werewolves were good people. Family oriented. Honest. They took care of their own and settle disputes fairly. Warlocks you just had to feel sorry for. They were always born out of tragedy and trickery. Besides, Shadowhunters were always going to need warlock magic and, when treated with respect, Warlocks made decent neighbors, figuratively speaking. There was no _point_ in being prejudiced toward them.

But Seelies and Vampires?

Vampires resented the accords and broke them at every opportunity. They were deadly and probably ninety percent of the writs of transmutation were signed by coercion.

Seelies were cruel and bizarre. When you couldn't lie, you perfected very complicated ways of avoiding the truth.

And mundanes-

"Hi!"

Alec only heard the words because they were shouted directly into his ear. He jumped, and a mundane boy spun out in front of him. He was broad and blonde with the exact same hair cut as Jace. He was wearing a white tank top, cut low enough that the curve muscle under his collar bone was clearly displayed. Streaks of paint, glowing under the lights, ran down his arms, and from his collarbone down under the neck of his shirt.

Yeah. That would work.

Alec smiled at him. The boy smiled back, leaned forward and almost pressed his lips against Alec's ear as he shouted to be heard over the din.

"What are you drinking?"

Alec picked up the menu and pointed again. The blonde boy grinned, took the menu from him, and turned to the bartender. He pointed to the paper, then held up two fingers.

The boy turned back to Alec, and leaned forward again. "Do you want any molly?"

Alec didn't know what that meant. He moved his own mouth to the boy's ear and replied "No! I'm good!"

"Okay. "

The bartender slid their two drinks between them. Alec downed the last few sips of his first drink quickly and started on the second.

The blonde boy set his hand at Alec's knee and grinned at him. Alec grinned back. It was too loud for a conversation. This guy was cute, and he was doing all the hard work.

Alec was about halfway through his drink, and starting to feel the effects, when the boy leaned over again.

"You are so fucking hot. Dance with me."

So Alec did.

No one on the dance floor was looking at him. It was almost like having his invisibility rune back on. It didn't matter if he couldn't dance either, he jumped around a little bit at first, but then the blonde's hands were all over him, and every move Alec made pressed them against each other more and more, until they were practically dry humping in the middle of the floor. He was hard and warm and out of control.

And it felt fucking great.

Alec wasn't sure who kissed who first, but neither was stopping. No one had kissed Alec in two and half years. He hadn't expected anger and petulant jealousy to push him this far.

He felt kind of drunk. What was in a Long Island Ice Tea?

Just as the room was starting to spin a little too much, the blonde slipped his hand into Alec's and tugged him toward the back of the dance floor. There was a dark hallway there, and the music was nowhere near as loud. Alec's ears were ringing from the onslaught.

The hallway was dark, except for blue and green track lights along the floor. There were alcoves along the entire length of the hallway. Some of them had curtains drawn across them. Some of them didn't. As the blonde pulled him down the hallway, looking for an empty alcove, Alec caught sight of a few couples making out, and doing more than making out, in the uncovered alcoves.

Finally, they passed an empty alcove and ducked inside. The blonde yanked the curtain shut behind them and was on top of Alec instantly. Pressing him back against the wall, kissing him, crushing Alec against his chest. He was surprisingly strong for a mundane.

Alec felt a little like he was drowning in hot water. The blonde's body was tight against him, and it was so stuffy back here. Sweat was dripping down Alec's face and he was gasping for breath between every kiss.

Things were starting to swirl around him as the blond kissed pulled Alec's tee shirt out of his jeans, then started to undo Alec's belt.

A shiver of something- maybe terror, maybe desire, Alec didn't know, ran through him, but he ignored it. He'd never done this with a stranger before. With someone he didn't know and who didn't care about him. But he could if he wanted to. He was always the responsible one. Would the world end if he wasn't, just for one night?

Besides, by now Jace was probably doing almost the same thing with that Seelie girl.

He probably wasn't doing it behind a curtain in a crowded hallway though.

The blonde thrust his hand into Alec's clothes and started to touch him. His lips were against Alec's ear again, but Alec couldn't hear him. He was speaking too quietly now. The mundane grabbed Alec's hand and shoved it into his own clothes, demanding reciprocation. He was circumcised, which threw Alec for a second. He wasn't. Edward Whitelaw hadn't been. But it couldn't be that different.

Judging by the way the blonde moaned as Alec started to move his hand, it wasn't.

A knot was starting in Alec's stomach. This wasn't the sort of thing he'd ever pictured himself doing. It was pretty… undignified. Wasn't it? Was he really doing this because he wanted to? Or was he just pissed at Jace and Izzy for never having to carry the responsibility like he did? Or was he just hurt that Jace had finally shown interest in someone, and it wasn't him?

Alec didn't even know this guy's name.

He set his hands at the blonde's chest just as the blond squeezed him in a new and intense way that might have convinced Alec to let him keep going if he had been just a little less sober. Instead, he pushed the mundane back gently, and when he didn't get the hint, Alec pushed a little less gently.

The blonde rocked back on his heels with a smile, launched forward to kiss Alec again, and set his hand at Alec's shoulders. He was a good kisser, Alec thought. Almost as good as Edward had been. Though, that could have just been the rosy glow of nostalgia.

The mundane suddenly pushed down on Alec's shoulder, hard enough that Alec's knee's buckled for just a second. If he'd been completely human, the shove probably would have pushed him down to the floor.

That was it. Alec didn't belong here. He was done. He grabbed the blonde's wrist and threw his hand back at him. For some reason the man was still smiling. The mundane leaned back in to talk to Alec over the music again, shouting loud enough to be heard this time. "Good call. You can never tell when they clean up back here. I live around the corner." He slid his hand back into Alec's underwear. "Come home with me. I'll give you the fuck of your life."

Alec pulled the mundane's hand out of his clothes. "I can't. I'm sorry."

"Okay. I get it. We can do it here," the blond tried to push Alec against the wall again but Alec threw out a hand and pushed him back hard enough that the blond had to take a step back to catch himself.

"No. I don't want to." Alec zipped his fly back up.

"Are you serious?"

"I'm always serious," Alec told him ruefully as he finished redoing his belt.

"God. You are a fucking little tease aren't you? What the fuck did you think was going to happen back here?" He grabbed Alec's bicep and dug his fingers in way too hard. "Jesus. How old are you?"

Pissed now, Alec straightened himself up to his full height, and got in the guy's face. "You might end up wishing you'd asked me that _before_ you tried to fuck me. Let me go."

The guy did. Alec left the alcove, already pulling his stele out of his pocket. He had an invisibility rune done before he turned the corner, just in time to see the blonde stomp past him.

The cold night was a relief against his skin and he walked away from the club, pulling in cold air like it was water. He was a couple blocks away before he put his coat back on, slung his bow and quiver over his shoulder, and checked his phone.

Fuck.

He had three missed calls, (two from Izzy, one from Jace) and ten text messages (five from each of them). They had both gotten back to the institute before he had.

Shit.

He opened Izzy's most recent text.

 _Alec, where are you? This isn't like you. We told mom that you ducked into a bodega to pick up some toothpaste and she went to sleep but if you don't text me back by midnight we are coming back out to find you._

He chuckled morosely to himself. That's exactly who he was. Someone who made a toothpaste run on a Friday night and was in bed before 11:30. It was 11:45 now. Izzy and Jace were probably already geared up and ready to sneak out of the Institute. He pulled up a group message to both of them.

 _I'm fine._

He walked further down the block. He wasn't fine. He was exhausted. He was drunk. He was starving.

Oh, and he was covered in some jerk's sweat and his hands smelled overwhelmingly of stranger crotch.

He wasn't fine, he was a fucking disaster.

A few blocks further along, the smell of grease wafting out of a diner's open front door drew him in. The waitress, a woman in her fifties who looked like her face had been carved from stone, appeared at the edge of his booth the second he sat down.

"Get you anything to start, kiddo?"

"French fries," Alec answered, his stomach talking before his brain could interfere. "Please."

The waitress looked at him for a moment. "Side of fries, coming right up. With a _big_ glass of water, okay sweetheart?"

"Thank you."

Alec turned the sound on his phone back on. Jace and Izzy had both responded to his message, demanding to know where he was.

 _I'm picking up some toothpaste_ , he texted back.

 _Dammit, Alec, we're worried about you_ , Jace replied.

 _I'm completely safe_ , Alec texted. _I just have to finish my taxes and work on my stamp collection and I'll come right home._

Alec went to the bathroom and scrubbed his hands down a couple times before what had happened really _hit him._

He'd just doubled the number of men he'd ever fooled around with. A boy he'd loved, and some dude who happened to be in the right place when Alec was angry and horny. He hadn't even asked that guy his name. He hadn't cared at all.

Maybe that was just growing up. He couldn't let himself care about anyone in New York the way he'd cared about Edward. And none of that had been really… _real_ anyway. They were fifteen, away from their real lives for three months in a beautiful place. Probably everyone thought there were in love at fifteen. Probably everyone had that person that they really should have slept with when it could have been perfect and simple.

It didn't matter anyway. That had been a long time ago.

Maybe Alec was still just drunk.

He ducked back into his booth just as the waitress returned with a tray. She set down a huge glass of water, a heaping plate of fries and a slice of cherry pie.

"Oh, I didn't order this," Alec told her.

The old woman put a finger to her lips. "I know, darling. Thought you could use it."

"Thank you."

Jace and Izzy kept texting him while he ate. He texted back another boring thing he could be doing every once in a while.

They didn't need to know what he was doing right now. There were a lot of things they didn't need to know about him. And maybe, in the morning, he would talk to Izzy about the things she did know about him.

But, for now, they just needed to know that he was safe.


	3. Three:Manhattan: Twenty One Years Old

Three:Manhattan: Twenty One Years Old

"I feel like I could just lay my head down and go to sleep for the next week," Alec sighed stepping into Lydia's room behind her.

"I know what you mean. This trial has been killing me."

"Tell me about it," Alec replied.

Lydia dropped down at the edge of her bed and bent down to take off her shoes. "Right." She pulled off one boot with a sigh, then the other before pinching the tops of them together in one hand, and setting them neatly off to one side of the bed. "Did you and Magnus get everything squared away?"

Alec shivered at the warlock's name. _Think of me when you shoot your arrows._ "Yeah. Just wrapped up our discussion on payment."

Lydia nodded. "I hate to think what he charged."

Alec ruffled the hair on the back of his neck. "Uh. Nothing. In the end."

Lydia looked up in surprise. "What? His rate for consulting on that forsaken was highway robbery."

Alec shrugged. He should be as honest as he could with Lydia.

They were getting married in six days.

"That was for the Clave," Alec asked. "He told me he wanted my…" Alec quickly rethought his sentence. "He was going to take my bow and arrow in payment, but I guess he changed his mind. He likes Izzy. He gave her that necklace."

"I thought that was a Lightwood necklace?"

"I guess a Lightwood got it from him to begin with."

"Which one?"

"Well. He has a soft spot for trouble makers. I could probably go through our lineage and figure it out."

Lydia laughed. "Want to sit down?"

"Uhm. Sure," Alec replied.

There were no chairs in Lydia's room. Institute guest rooms were pretty spartan across the board, but the New York Institute didn't get a lot of guests and a few of the rooms had been denuded of their extras— chairs, mirrors, linens— to replace things that had broken or worn out in the rooms that were actually used. He perched carefully at the edge of her bed next to her.

"Everything's been such a whirlwind since I got here," Lydia said. "You and I haven't really had a chance to just be alone together."

Alec licked his lips, "Yeah. That's…" he hadn't thought about it, really. How bad should he feel about that? What should he say to her?

Before he could think of anything, Lydia kissed him.

He jumped in surprise, then hurriedly kissed her back to cover it.

Lydia pulled out of the kiss with a soft laugh. She set her palm at his collar bone and looked up at him with a smile.

"You're a good kisser."

Alec smiled back. "Yeah. You too."

She did have a really pretty smile, Alec thought. It was nice to see it.

Her smiled turned from pretty to mischievious as she scooted from the foot of the bed up to the top. She leaned back against the pillows and patted the blanket next to her.

He hadn't expected this. But the wedding was only a week away. He should follow her.

He did.

"It's nice to have a little time to ourselves, right?" She asked. "Before the wedding?"

"Yeah," Alec responded. "You were amazing up there today."

Her face split into a wider grin, and she set her hand to the side of his face and pulled him back in to a kiss.

This was kind of nice, actually.

There was something really comforting about coming home from long draining day, and being with someone like this. After today in court, the way Lydia had stood up to the Inquisitor? Alec was more convinced than ever that he'd made the right call. He could imagine a future with Lydia. Running an Institute with her. Fighting demons with her. Maybe even working to update some policies. Bring the Clave into the modern world a little bit. She'd be a good mother.

This was exactly the sort of steady, responsible engagement he'd needed.

Yeah. This was nice.

Everyone kept telling him that he didn't know what he was doing, but he did.

Izzy didn't get it. She thought you could just run around doing whatever you wanted, no matter who it hurt or how it made you look. She'd figure it out in a couple years. And his mother just wanted to control who he married. If she had picked out Lydia herself, she would think it was a perfect match.

And it _was._ Lydia was smart, and confident. Compassionate, poised. Amazing in battle. Kind. They shared all the same values.

And she smelled nice. And… her face was soft.

He was going to experiment. Alec turned his head to the side and when Lydia moved to follow him, he, very gently, prodded her lips with his tongue. She sighed quietly as she did the same, then set her hand over Alec's side.

This was going great.

Alec also put his hand at Lydia's side. She was soft there too. Not, like, super soft. She was a Shadowhunter, she had to be strong and fit, but… comparatively. Soft.

Lydia kissed him harder and moved closer.

Okay. She had places that were really soft, so maybe this was different than… other things he'd done. But not terrible.

This was fine.

Really, this wasn't radically different than the first night after Edward had kissed him during his summer in Idris. It was a lot different than what had happened at that mundane club a couple years ago, but that was good. He'd out grown that. He wasn't a kid anymore. He was a leader at the New York Institute. He had responsibilities and duties. And he didn't want to be the type of person that a stranger thought might suck cock in a dirty back hallway. He wanted _this_. A respectable partnership, with a girl he genuinely liked. He could get used to this. Like, he used to hate peas, but he ate them now.

They sank a little further down the pillows, rearranging themselves every few inches until they were lying on the bed, chest to chest. Arms around each other.

Lydia moved her arm between them, and set it as his chest again. He kind of liked that. Her hands were warm and gentle. Maybe he should do the same thing?

Her hands had been at his shoulders. His were at her waist.

He'd move them up to her chest. Yes.

He slid his hand from the outside of her full hip, over the curve of her stomach and up, then realized his mistake, stopped, and continued to kiss her with his hand just sort of… hanging out on her stomach.

Okay. So this was a little less… intuitive than it had been with Edward. A little boring. But he wasn't fifteen anymore and desperate for someone to touch him. And they weren't even doing anything yet. They were still getting to know each other. And besides, weren't girls supposed to be more reserved about sexual things?

Lydia's face fell away from his and he let his head sink down more comfortably into the pillows.

"You know," she said. "You were in Idris for the summer the same year my younger sister was."

Alec's stomach knotted. His summer in Idris was not a topic he wanted to discuss. Not right now. Not here. Not really ever.

He forced the same sort of lip bitten grin that Lydia had given before they'd moved up on the bed. "Is that so?" he asked.

"Mhmm," She replied. "And when she came home I heard all about _Alexander Lightwood_." Lydia laughed—and then she undid the top button of his shirt. Alec held himself completely still.

"He was so talented." Another button. "He was so tall." Another button. "He was so handsome." Another button. "No one could beat him in a fight." Another button. "No one could outshoot him." His last button.

Alec gulped as Lydia slipped her hand under his shirt and cupped her palm around his bare hip.

He should say something.

Something charming. Maybe something romantic.

Nothing about Idris.

Lydia looked at him like she expected him to reply, and when he didn't, she kissed him again. Her hand against his waist felt heavy and strange.

But it was easier to reply to than her words.

Her shirt didn't have buttons, but the hem of it was already moving up her body. He set his hand at her hip and let his fingers slide up under her shirt before settling against her really, very soft skin. Like… softer than he thought skin got.

And then things got a little out of control.

Lydia pushed his shirt back off his shoulders. Alec responded by pushing her shirt higher up her stomach. She sat up, pulled her shirt over her head and tossed it over the side of the bed, leaving her bare tot he waist except for an unembellished, pale pink bra.

Alec stared at her half bare body for a second before he started wriggling out of his shirt, finally managing to pull it off despite his shaking fingers. He threw off the edge of the bed and laid back down next to Lydia again.

And then she grabbed his belt buckle.

"Whoa," Alec managed, his hands flying to hers and clamping down much too hard.

Lydia stopped.

Across the pillow, her smile was kind. There was no judgement or expectation in it.

"Alec?" She asked. "Have you ever been with a woman?"

He gaped at her. Opened his mouth. Made sounds that were supposed to have been words and finally stuttered out a "No."

It wasn't a lie.

Lydia nodded. She cupped the side of his face, and ran her thumb over his cheek, then smiled again and rolled over. She opened the top drawer of her nightstand, fished around, and turned back.

He knew what was going to be in her hand when she turned back to him. He grit his teeth. He was not going to freak out. He was not going to think about a perfect summer day a lifetime ago. He was not going to think about the taste of melon and mint. He was not going to think about the last time this had happened. He was not going to think about a decision that had seemed so logical before he'd spent six years regretting it.

Lydia turned back to him, condom in hand, and held it between their faces.

By the Angel. It was the same brand. Same color. Everything. Exactly the same as the last time.

 _Do not freak out_ , Alec told himself. _Do not react at all._

Lydia laughed, and tapped the foil against his nose. "Alec. It's okay. Relax."

She set the condom down on the pillow.

"We're a lot alike, you know. We understand the importance of family. We want to fight for good in this world," Lydia said. "I really loved my husband. I haven't been with anyone else. I hadn't really thought about it before you proposed to me. I'm nervous too."

Alec didn't trust himself to say anything worth contributing. He nodded.

"But I'm excited about the good we can do together. The lives we can have. And I'm ready," She picked the condom back up and moved her hand down the space between them. She tucked it into his hand. "Whenever you are."

Alec continued to stare at her, desperately wishing that he could think of something, _anything_ to reply. His mouth opened, and before he could stop it, announced, "The wedding's in a week."

Lydia nodded. "Yeah. It is. And you're a traditional guy. But we can make our own rules here. I'm ready, whenever you are," she repeated. "So if that's right now, that's okay. If that's on our wedding night, that's okay. And we're still getting to know each other, if it's after the wedding, _after_ after, that's fine too."

 _She fucking knows_ , Alec thought, stomach knotting up painfully. _She's known since that day in the morgue when you got so weird about Magnus coming to the Institute and she's giving you an out._

Lydia wriggled closer to him, tucked her face against his chest, and said nothing.

You could try it, he told himself. Right now. You can pull her on top of you and try it and if it doesn't work then she'll help you think of a reason to call this all off.

 _And then what?_

He'd be back to square one. Magnus would think it was about him, and keep chasing him. And Alec might give in. He knew it. And then he'd still have to get married to save his family name. And he'd hurt Magnus even more if he did it later. And what were the chances he'd find a girl as perfect as Lydia if he let her go now?He was doing this for a strong political alliance, he wasn't going to do better than this.

No. He couldn't get out of this. And Lydia knew that too, and she'd removed the countdown. He didn't need to figure this out in the next week anymore. _She'd done that for him_. That was amazing.

He could love a girl like that. In time. He knew he could. He could love Lydia. The rest would come. He'd figure it out for her.

"Thank you," he whispered.

Lydia kissed him, lightly, on the tip of the nose. They both laughed, and Alec slipped the condom into his back pocket.

"It's getting kind of late," Lydia said.

"Do you want me to go?"

"If you want to."

Alec hugged her, pulling her close to him and breathing in the light, flowery scent of her hair.

"Yeah. Okay. I'll see you tomorrow."

"Yeah."

Alec gathered his clothes up off the floor, and got dressed quickly. He kissed Lydia good night and stepped out into the hallway, then hurried back to his room.

Six days until the wedding.


	4. Four: Idris: Fifteen Years Old

**Idris: Fifteen Years Old**

Every Shadowhunter in the New York Institute had told Alec that he would spend the rest of his life looking back fondly on his summer training at the Idris Institute. It was an important rite of passage for young Shadowhunters, a chance to fall in love with the homeland and build connections between institutes. It was also the first time that some of the children from out of the way Institutes, like New York City, really got a chance to be with Shadowhunters their own age.

Hodge had gotten so choked up talking about it that he had to excuse himself from their lesson and come back to the library a full five minutes later, looking pretty shaken.

Alec's father had told him that the summer he'd spent there as a boy had been one of the happiest times in his life.

With only a week of the summer left, Alec had to agree. But he was sure that the reasons he was having the best summer of his life were very different than the reasons every other Shadowhunter he knew had waxed poetic about their fifteenth summer.

No one else's summer had been made magical by Edward Whitelaw's smile.

Edward was grinning now, the way he had for the last three months, like there were fireworks inside him, desperate to burst out.

"I brought something special!" He announced. Alec tried not to giggle at him. Edward's voice was still changing. It crackled and squeaked like a bonfire whenever he was excited.

Edward dug through the huge leather weapon bag they had brought with them. Today had been announced as a free day two weeks ago and Alec and Edward had been secreting items into this bag ever since. A pack of cards, silverware, a couple books. Alec had stolen some blankets from the laundry room last night. This morning, Edward had made a mad dash into the kitchen and emerged with a bunch of fruit, a loaf of bread, and a bag of dry noodles, because someone had walked in and he had panicked. Alec had teased him about it the whole walk here.

Edward dug his hand into the bag, and pulled out a fist-sized object—white waxed paper, tied at the top with a piece of twine. He hurriedly untied the bag, poked his fingers into the opening, and pulled out a light green ball a little bigger than a marble, then popped it into his mouth.

"These are my favorite. You can only get them in Idris. My parents always bring a bag back for me when they have to come here on Clave business."

"What do they taste like?" Alec asked.

Edward _smiled_ at him and crooked his finger, beckoning Alec closer. Alec moved across the blanket until he was right in front of Edward. Edward held the bag out to Alec, then pulled it back at the last moment and planted a kiss on Alec's lips with a laugh. He tasted like mint and melon.

Alec kissed him back, and while Edward was distracted, Alec snatched the bag of candy out of his hands, and rocketed backward. Edward tried to catch him before he could get away, but Alec pushed away harder. When Edward let go unexpectedly, Alec over balanced and hit the blanket behind with a soft "wump".

Laughing like a maniac, Edward laid down next to him. Alec stuck his tongue out at Edward, then took a piece of candy out of the bag and triumphantly slipped it into his mouth. It melted almost instantly.

He had never been this happy. The warm glow in his chest was almost enough to burn off the fog and dark clouds of the very certain future. Their three months in Idris was ending on Saturday, and they were both going back home. Everything was going to be different after they parted ways, and there was nothing they could do to change that.

"Thank the Angel that Carstairs twerp refused to room with me," Edward sighed, flinging an arm around Alec's stomach. "For once, Shadowhunter family honor bullshit worked out in my favor. May the Angel bless my however many greats granny for sneezing on his ditto great second cousin while he was chewing on his toenails during some goddamn medieval dinner, where everyone was secretly dying of syphilis."

Alec burst out laughing, "Can you even imagine living with him?"

It was a perfect day. The sun was bright and warm. They'd marched nearly half a mile into a huge field outside the city, where the grass and wild flowers grew almost shoulder high. They were hidden in a world that smelled like flowers and sounded like bird song. Fluffy white clouds passed by overhead.

Alec closed his eyes, luxuriating in the warmth of the sun on his cheeks and the weight of Edward's arm on top of him.

"I can imagine it in perfect detail," Edward snorted. "Up at 6:00 while he grunts his way through a handful of push ups."

"Playing that damn victrola," Alec added.

"Squeezing his zits while he explains how you _clearly-"_

" _Weren't taught anything,_ " Alec joined in, in a passable imitation of Alphonse Carstairs's whiny, nasal voice.

"About the proper way to pick spell herbs."

Alec laughed and Edward wriggled closer, setting his head on Alec's shoulder.

"God, when you outshot him in archery on the first day?" Edward sighed wistfully, "And Mrs. Verlac said you were the best shot she'd ever seen and Carstairs stormed off? I could have kissed you right there."

"That's not really fair. I'm the only one who was used to the bow. The New York Institute is better funded than a few of the others."

Edward poked Alec in the ribs. "Stop being so damn modest. We don't do bullshit, or sarcasm at the Moscow Institute, so fucking believe me when I tell you that you're an amazing Shadowhunter."

Alec didn't respond.

"And if I hadn't been able to move into your room," Edward went on, "I probably would have spent the entire summer listening to Carstairs whine about how jealous he was of you. And worst of all, I wouldn't have been with you." Edward punctuated this with a quick kiss to Alec's cheek.

"Did you know? When you requested my room?"

Edward groaned a little bit, bumping his head against Alec's chest. "You keep asking me that. I told you. It's not exactly like knowing. It's like when you first learn to pull back a glamour, but can't quite do it yet. Remember? When the shape of what's real is just nearly there?"

"Right," Alec said.

"Don't worry so much. No one can tell. Especially Shadowhunters. Especially in Idris."

"Why especially Shadowhunters?"

"Why do mundanes never see magic?" Edward replied. "It can't be real. It's not part of their world. Trust me. It's the same. How else do you explain last weekend?"

The memory made Alec shiver. They'd gotten lazy and over-confident and almost been caught. They had forgotten how thin the walls were, and how much their bed frames squeaked.

"That was your fault," Alec whispered.

Edward pulled away and up, glowering down at Alec indignantly. "I know they let you do whatever you want in New York City, but in civilized parts of the world you warn people if you're suddenly going to go down on them."

Alec rolled his eyes. " _Clearly_ , you weren't taught _anything_ about the _proper way_ to—"

"—Shut up!" Edward laughed, pressing his hand down over Alec's mouth. Alec pushed his hand away, and Edward replaced it with his mouth.

Alec wished that this never had to end. He wanted to stay in Idris forever. He didn't have to make himself invisible to walk around the city, or glamour his marks before he could talk to anyone. His teachers actually seemed to like him. His mother was always shouting at him to do better, but the adult Shadowhunters here always seemed impressed with him.

He felt bad for admitting it, but it was a relief to be away from Jace too. All his urgent wondering about what Jace thought about him, and why Jace never seemed interested in girls, and why Jace looked at him like that seemed so much less important, and so much less confusing when he knew exactly where he stood with Edward.

Edward, who wasn't his adoptive brother. Edward, who never suddenly got mad for no reason. Edward, who had told him he was beautiful and kissed him after only two weeks of sharing a room together, like it was the easiest thing in the world.

Alec had had a weird, twisting little crush on Jace. He knew that. He thought he still might. If he was honest, he was a little afraid of seeing Jace when he got back, of how it might make him feel. It was complicated. But he was pretty sure he was in love with Edward Whitelaw. And he wished, so much, that it could be simple.

"Maybe you could come visit me in New York," Alec whispered, as Edward moved down to kiss his neck. He was shocked at himself once the words left his mouth. They'd talked about this a couple times. It was the first thing Edward had brought up on that first night. This whole thing between them had an expiration date. They could be together, but only if they both accepted that it ended when the summer did.

The summer training in Idris was like a coming of age ritual. You were, mostly, an adult when you went home. You could go on missions, you could be sent out into the field alone. You had new weapons privileges. You were, more officially than ever, carrying on your family's legacy.

You left childish things behind.

Edward squeezed him and pulled away. "Alec—"

"—I _know._ I'm sorry."

"We agreed," Edward said softly. "Three perfect months."

"Technically, we only got two and a half," Alec said. He thought it might lighten the mood, but it just made Edward stop kissing him and sit up.

"Hey, I'm sorry," Alec said again. "Eddie, I'm sor-"

"No, it's okay," Edward said. He set his palm over Alec's stomach again, smoothing down Alec's shirt. Alec watched the wind toss Edward's fine brunette hair until he spoke again.

"Have you ever heard of Jocelyn Fairchild?"

"Wasn't she Valentine's wife?"

"Yeah," Edward answered. "Her bones and her parent's bones and her children's bones were all found at the Morgenstern manor. Turned into charcoal." He started drawing patterns with his fingertips across Alec's cotton covered stomach. "Anyway. My mother is a total conspiracy nut. You know, like… the Starkweathers have some demon blood from way back when, or Magnus Bane is so powerful because he's one of the only warlocks sired by a prince of Hell."

"Who's Magnus Bane?" Alec asked.

Edward sucked his teeth. "You should know that. He's the High Warlock of Brooklyn."

Alec shrugged. Only adult Shadowhunters ever dealt with Warlocks.

"According to my mother, there's a rumor that Jocelyn Fairchild is still alive. That she escaped after the Uprising and is living somewhere pretending to be a mundane."

"Where?" Alec asked.

"Well. It doesn't matter. It's not true," Edward said. He laid back down, tucking himself back into the space next to Alec's body. "It's just like… a fantasy. You know. Running away from the Clave. Not spending half an hour every day carving up your skin. Marrying whoever you want, almost. At least not having your parents assign you a politically appropriate wife. Going to college. Becoming a professional snowboarder, or a bus driver, or a chef, or just any damn thing other than a Shadowhunter."

Alec had never heard of any Shadowhunter not wanting to be a Shadowhunter before. The absolute worst punishment a Shadowhunter could receive was being stripped of their runes and sent out into the world as a mundane. He wrapped his arm more tightly around Edward.

"What's snowboarding?" he asked.

Edward scoffed. "By the Angel, Alec. America is wasted on you."

Alec brought his hand up to Edward's hair, and brushed his fingers through it. It was thin and downy soft, nothing like his own course, thick hair.

"I like hunting demons," Alec said. "I want to run the New York Institute some day."

"Good," Edward sat back up, and stretched over Alec to retrieve the back of candy that had been knocked to the edge of the blanket. He ate another piece, then took a second one out of the bag and held it over Alec's lips. Alec opened them and let Edward drop the candy into his mouth. "You are going to be a great Head of Institute some day."

Alec let Edward feed him another piece of candy before he felt silly and grabbed Edward's hand between his own, pulling it down to his chest.

Edward looked at him for a few moments, and Alec closed his eyes again at the soft, reassuring feeling of Edward's thumb moving back and forth over his sternum.

"Hey, Alec?"

"Yeah?"

"I brought… umm… other special things."

His tone was weird. Excited, but in a much more muted way than Alec was used to. At least he didn't sound sad anymore.

"What kind of special things?" Alec asked, opening his eyes.

Edward bit his lip and dug his hand back into the weapons bag. He pulled out something too small for Alec to see from where he was laying down, dropped it in his lap and dug his hand into the bag again. After retrieving a second item, Edward balled both of them up in his fist and scooted toward Alec. Alec sat up as Edward extended his hand out and uncurled his fingers.

A of packet and a little plastic bottle were sitting in his hand. Alec picked up the foil packet. There was something printed on the front.

 _Durex 1 natural rubber latex condom_

Alec gaped at it.

"Alec?"

Alec handed the condom back to him, clearing this throat. Edward plucked it from between Alec's fingers, set it on the blanket, and enveloped Alec's hand in his own.

"Alec. I'm going to think about you all the time back in Russia," Edward whispered. "About that ridiculous noise you make when I wake you up, and the face you make when you're looking at a target, and the smell of that awful shit you put in your hair." He laughed. "And I just… I want to do everything in the world with you while we have the chance."

Alec stared down at their hands, trying to think.

Why was this such a shock? They'd done everything else. Well… one thing mainly and then another thing very recently. But those things had been happening all summer. They were at least a month past pretending that was just experimentation. And it wasn't just that. Alec had never been as happy as he was when he was with Edward. He had two classes that Edward wasn't in, and he missed him by the end of them. Missed him as though he was further away than a few doors further down the hallway. Missed him like he was going to miss him when they were back to being on opposite sides of the world.

Alec looked up from their hands, to the tall flowers and endless blue sky around them.

This. This was exactly what being with Edward was like. Warm and beautiful and isolated. Alec really hadn't imagined… going all the way… but was there any real reason not to?

"Eddie," Alec started.

"I'm not going to be upset if you say no."

Alec nodded. Okay. That hadn't actually occurred to him, but it was good to know.

"I thought it would be the perfect end to the perfect summer. And… you know. This is our only chance."

The heat in the middle of Alec's chest started to go cold. Right. They couldn't do it in their room. Someone would hear them and no matter how much Edward insisted that Shadowhunters never suspected that anything could ever happen between male Shadowhunters, if they risked this, after what happened last weekend, they were going to be found out. No one had ever disgraced themselves out of Shadowhunter society during their summer in Idris before. Alec didn't want to have anything to do with making Eddie one of the first people it happened to.

"Maybe… Eddie, maybe that's why we shouldn't."

"What?"

"This… this is our only chance. For all of this. We're both oldest sons. You're the last Whitelaw. We're going to leave here and go back to our normal lives. Our normal responsibilities. We're going to have to protect our family names, and get married, and have kids," Alec took in a shaking breath. He couldn't believe he was going to say no. "It's been a perfect summer. Everything. Look around. Today is perfect. What if we do this and it wrecks it?"

"That would be awful," Edward said.

"Awful," Alec echoed. "I'm scared to do anything that might mess up the next week, but… I'm also afraid of doing something that makes it too hard to say goodbye. Right? Like we've been saying. Three perfect months. Then that's it."

Edward nodded and squeezed Alec's hands. "Yeah. I guess we can't exactly save up enough allowance money to pay a warlock to portal us between Moscow and New York. I don't want to write letters until we just don't have anything to say to each other anymore. We need… we need to be able to say goodbye."

"I'm sorry, Eddie," Alec sighed, leaning forward until their foreheads touched. "I'm so sorry."

"No. Don't be sorry. You're right." Eddie coughed.

Alec grit his teeth. He had about twenty seconds of resistance left. If Edward asked him again, he was going to say yes.

Edward sighed, long and loud, kissed Alec's cheek and pulled his hands away.

"I am starving," he announced. "How about you?"

"Yeah," Alec replied, clearing his throat and doing his best to surreptitiously wipe his eyes. "Totally starving. Can you dig out some of those dry noodles for me?"

Edward rolled his eyes. "I warned you about not having sarcasm in Russia. I'm going to make you eat them now."


	5. 5: Technically International Waters: 21

Five:Technically International Waters: Twenty One Years Old

"I can't be late," Alec insisted. Again.

"You won't be late," Magnus replied in the same warm, throaty voice that had gotten Alec underneath him to begin with.

He loved that voice. Usually Magnus used it on the couch, after all their clothes were off and the desire not to stop touching each other was no longer quite winning out over the annoyance of their skin sticking to the leather. That voice always meant that, however good Alec felt now, it was only going to get better.

But he had responsibilities. Just because Magnus was slipping his hands under Alec's tee shirt and kissing his way down Alec's chest didn't mean that Alec didn't have obligations today.

"They're announcing the action taken on the Inquisitor's report at ten," Alec reminded Magnus again. "I have to be there." His breathless voice didn't make him sound particularly authoritative. He blamed Magnus for that.

"I promise you will be on time," Magnus whispered again kissing a very promising line across Alec's lower belly.

… Was this meeting _really_ that important? Alec wondered. The Lightwoods were sure to lose control of the Institute. Going to hear it read out loud was just a formality.

But a formality he had to go be a part of. He might be a disgrace and a laughing stock, but he was still a Shadowhunter.

"You promise, huh? Like you promised we'd make it to the movie on time last night?" Alec demanded.

Magnus laughed and kissed his way back up Alec's body. He hung over him, grinning. "I didn't make you wear a bright blue shirt. You made the decision to show up here looking _absolutely amazing_. I don't think you can put that on me."

His grin was contagious. "You liked that shirt, huh?" Alec asked. "You ripped me out of it so fast I wouldn't have guessed."

"I did not _rip_ you out of anything. I was very careful," Magnus kissed him hard, deep, and sudden. "I will be careful with any colorful shirts you feel the need to bring here."

"Right," Alec laughed. "Your floor is very safe."

He brought his lips to Magnus's for another kiss. A last one. If he didn't get out of Magnus's bed now he wasn't going to be able to. They would keep kissing. He'd let Magnus undress him.

And that would all have been fine. They had time for all of that and it sounded like the perfect way to start what was going to be a long and unpleasant day.

The problem was the _pause_.

It had happened again last night. It was happening more and more. It wasn't bad. It was never awkward or uncomfortable, it was just distinct. They would be kissing, maybe getting naked, maybe already naked. One of them would break the kiss and there would be a space. A moment where they were both wondering the same thing.

 _"_ _Tonight?"_

But neither of them ever initiated more. Magnus had wanted to wait, and, looking back at the last two months, Alec was glad he'd insisted.

But now?

Alec knew where the cups and towels were. There had been lots of conversations, over lots of dinners, lots of drinks. Alec had learned more about Camille Belcourt than he would have liked too. Magnus had admitted that he was much closer to 600 years old than 300, which for some reason, had freaked Alec out for a couple of days. As though, when you were 21, it even mattered if your boyfriend was 280 years older than you or 580 years older. And Alec had told Magnus about that summer out of time with Edward Whitelaw. The night out of his mind with that mundane boy. Even Jace and the feelings he'd never quite pinned down.

When Alec slept at the Institute, if he dreamed about Magnus, he always looked like he did now. No make-up. No product in his hair. Magnus Bane— occasionally over-dramatic boyfriend, not Magnus Boyfriend— High Warlock of Brooklyn.

When the pause happened, it was never doubt. Alec wanted it. He was sure Magnus wanted it. The pause was just a indication of distance in time. A slight confusion. How do we get from here to there?

But when Magnus was on top of him— warm and naked and so good with his hands and so good with his mouth— it always felt like that pause had been just a little too long not to go immediately back to what they'd been doing. To make up for a moment's lost time.

And if Alec kept letting Magnus kiss his neck like this, he was going to be naked and panting and staring up into Magnus's face while that pause washed over them both again.

And then he was going to be so, so late.

He set his hands to Magnus's shoulders and pushed him back, gently.

"I really have to go. I'm sorry."

Magnus circled one of his hands around Alec's wrists. "You really don't. The reading is at ten, it's only nine now. What I have in mind is not going to take more than half an hour. You can be in and out of the shower and in a portal by 9:50 at the _latest."_

He snapped the fingers of his free hand and his cellphone appeared in it. He tapped at the screen a few times, then turned it to show to Alec. "Ta da." He'd set an alarm for 9:30. "Let me worry about the time, let me worry about _getting you there_ on time." He set the phone on his nightstand. "You worry about laying back," Magnus snapped his fingers again and their clothes vanished. "And enjoying yourself."

Alec rolled his eyes, grabbed the phone off the nightstand and reset the alarm for 9:40.

"I'll shower fast."

* * *

Alec walloped the punching bag, once, then again, then again. He could see people looking him out of the corner of their eyes. One or two openly staring. He didn't care.

"Is that helping?"

He turned to the voice, familiar now, and almost less grating. Clary was standing there, arms crossed over her chest.

"Yeah," Alec snapped. "It is."

Clary nodded, stepped up onto the training floor and socked the middle of the punching bag, hard.

She hissed and pulled her hand back, shaking it.

"You need to wrap your knuckles," Alec said. He didn't feel as chagrinned by her as he might have a few weeks ago. Clary Fray had lost the ability to disrupt his life anymore. "Come on. You know that by now."

"I've got wraps," Isabelle said, appearing behind them and handing Clary the roll. "I see we all had the same idea."

"Well. We can't punch the Inquisitor," Alec muttered. He took the roll from Clary, indicated that she should hold out her hand and started wrapping her hands.

Isabelle hit the punching bag almost as hard as Alec had. "No we can't."

"We can go 'collude with spies'," Clary said nastily, quoting the Inquisitor's report.

"Display perversion unbefitting a leader," Alec countered.

"Flaunt inappropriate attachment to downworlders," Isabelle huffed, with another punch.

"I think that was about me too," Alec sighed. He finished Clary's right hand, she turned around, hit the bag and turned back with her left hand out.

"I can't believe she said that," Clary said to Alec. "I mean… Lydia tried to explain the whole Shadowhunter traditions thing to me, but I never thought they'd actually write that about you in an official, _legal_ , document. That's sick."

Alec wondered for a second when Clary and Lydia ever would have discussed how the Clave felt about gay Shadowhunters, but decided not to ask. What did it matter now?

"The Law is hard," Isabelle sneered, landing a series of punches and a couple kicks on the target.

"The Law is bullshit," Alec replied.

Both girls froze, and stared at him.

"I can't believe you just said that out loud," Isabelle said. " _You._ "

Alec shrugged. "Were you sitting in the same briefing I was? The Inquisitor is insane. She has it in for all of us, that wasn't the same crap from Izzy's trial. That was something personal. I don't know if Valentine killed someone close to her and she thinks letting Jace rot will be enough revenge. I don't know if a downworlder killed someone she knew. Maybe she just hates the Lightwoods because of some stupid fucking family honor thing. But that was personal. That wasn't Law, that wasn't Justice, that was revenge and sadism. And the three of us have exactly zero ability to do anything about it." He started to pull the wrap off his hands. "And I'm not going to try."

"Alec," Isabelle started. "There are still options. We haven't been banished, we aren't even being sent away from the Institute. The Inquisitor leaves tomorrow. We still have skills and experience to bring to this team. We can rebuild our reputations."

Alec was surprised at how little he cared. He didn't want to fight back. The Clave had been the rock at the center of Shadowhunter culture, law, and government for thousands of years. You couldn't punch rock. You couldn't make it listen.

"Yeah. You do that." He pulled his phone out of his pocket, and texted Magnus. Just one word.

 _Tonight._

"What are you doing?" Isabelle asked.

"I'm making dinner plans," Alec answered. He slid his phone back into his pocket and looked up at the girls, who were staring back at him, with much more worry than he thought seemed warranted. "What?"

"You're aggravatingly calm. You can't just give up," Clary replied.

"I'm not giving up," Alec replied. "I'm just getting out. This," Alec waved a hand out, indicating the Institute at large, "All of it, is just a self perpetuating monster. Everyone trained the same, to follow the same laws, and make the same decisions and have the same lives we've had since Jonathan Shadowhunter got an ugly crystal set from a bored angel and decided he was better than everyone else in the Shadow World."

"What about Jace?" Clary demanded.

"We're still looking for Jace. Okay? I'm not giving up on him, but, look— Valentine invited Jace onto his ship—"

Clary raised her fists at Alec.

Alec raised an eyebrow at her. "And he is a fully trained adult, and probably knows Valentine better than any Shadowhunter alive, except for Jocelyn, who, I'm sorry Clary, hasn't been much help."

"Alec—" Izzy started.

"I'm not giving up, okay? I'm just saying— Jace isn't helpless. He's clearly valuable to Valentine. Maybe he has a plan, which is more than we have. We're out of leads. We don't know if the message we sent got through. We have no one left to question. Magnus has tried to track everything Jace owns. We tried to use the parabatai bond. The only thing we know is that he's over water. We can't check _all of the water_. So yeah. Clary, Izzy, I had a shitty day. I don't have anything to work on to help Jace right now, and I don't want to stay here in the epicenter of shittiness. I'm gonna go somewhere else and be happy."

His phone buzzed as he walked away. Magnus was calling.

* * *

"So this is your bedroom," Magnus said. He did that thing he did sometimes, where he rocked back on his heel and twirled around, somehow managing to look like it took absolutely no effort on his part. Like the floor itself spun and he just stood in the right spot. "It's… exactly how I imagined it."

"Exactly the same as every other room in the New York Institute?" Alec asked. Magnus had asked to come to the Institute to help Alec pack. Alec was going through the clothes in his closet, not sure what to pack, where they were going, or why Magnus hadn't just portalled them back to his loft. Alec had plenty of clothes there.

"No, just… quietly you."

Alec made a face at him, and Magnus threw his arms out, indicating the whole of Alec's room. Alec rolled his eyes and mimic'd the gesture. "Everything in this room has been here for two hundred years."

Magnus strolled over to Alec's door and pointed at the three pairs of shoes, lined up neatly at the door. He walked to the nightstand and pointed at a little ceramic figure of a black cat with an angry expression that Isabelle had put there, years ago. Then he went to Alec's dresser and pointed at the fishbowl. The little blue beta fish inside flared at his finger.

"He's been here for two hundred years?"

Alec felt the blush hit his cheeks. He liked his fish. "He's been there for three years. I won him at a carnival."

"I haven't heard this story," Magnus replied.

"Isabelle…" Alec started, then scoffed. "Isabelle tricked me. She'd gotten in trouble, so she couldn't leave the institute unless there was a mission. She wanted to meet up with some guy at a carnival so she convinced Hodge that there was a minor demon attack. He might not have even believed her. He… you know. Indulged us. Maybe he just wanted to let her go."

"And you went through the carnival games?"

"We both would have gotten in trouble if we just turned around. I told her I was leaving in an hour and I'd rat her out if she didn't come back with me. So she and the guy went off and I… kept busy."

"Does he have a name?"

"The guy?

"The fish."

"No."

"He's just called Fish?"

He wasn't sure if Magnus was teasing him. "He's a fish. He's not called anything."

Magnus nodded and went to Alec's desk. He pointed at a stack of books. "What about these?"

"Half of those are yours," Alec replied.

"Gifts. They're yours now." He sifted through the pile. "And the rest are about making arrows." He spun again, looking back at Alec with a soft smile.

In his loft, Magnus always looked like the focus of a painting. He glittered and shone and every priceless, ancient object around him only served to bring the eye back to him. Here in Alec's room, he looked like a seam of precious gems in a dark mine.

Alec realized he'd been staring a little too long. He cleared his throat. "Shadowhunters don't really have hobbies. So come on. Why am I packing? What am I packing? Why aren't we just going back to the loft?"

Magnus was never still. He was always swaying or doing something with his hands, but Alec was learning to read him, and he almost seemed… nervous.

"Magnus?" Alec asked. "What's wrong?"

Magnus turned back to him, and after a moment's hesitation, went to sit on Alec's bed. His face contorted as he sat. "This is really your mattress? You sleep on this?" He snapped his fingers.

Alec went to join him, unsurprised at the new and improved softness of his mattress.

"Magnus."

Magnus started to run his thumb over his finger pads. "Why tonight?"

Alec stretched backward on his bed, and flung his hand out to Magnus, who took it and allowed himself to be pulled down.

"Why doesn't anyone trust me to know what I want?" Alec asked.

"Because we all told you to go after it and you nearly ended up married to a girl you'd just met."

"At the time,"Alec said slowly, sick of explaining this. "It made perfect sense."

Magnus sighed. "Fine. At _this time_ I'm worried that this is about you wanting to fuck the Clave more than you want to fuck me. I'm patient and selfish and if we're going to do this, I want to be the only thing you're thinking about."

Alec nodded, turned his head to the side and bumped his forehead against Magnus's.

"This isn't about the Clave," Alec promised. "Yeah, I'm pissed about what happened today. It's unfair and it's humiliating and my mother is never going to speak to me again. But… wanting you isn't about them. I'm not in some sort of rage about it. I'm not just using you as a way to avoid some sort of epic blow out. I didn't text you just because I can't go stomp down their doors and give them a piece of my mind."

Magnus shifted a little closer, so that their bodies pressed together.

"I'm just…" Alec started. "I'm tired when I'm here, Magnus. You know, and when you're around…I'm not." Alec was getting better at talking about feelings, but he still needed Magnus to prod at him a little bit.

Magnus lifted his head and gave Alec a glittering smile. "What are you when I'm around?"

Alec worked himself up on his elbows. "Calm. Happy. And lately?" Alec fiddled with the weird cravat thing at the top of Magnus's shimmering green shirt. "Ready. So come on. Tell me what you want me to pack, and where we're going, and let's _go_."

Magnus pulled back for a second, looked at Alec, and finally smiled and rocked forward, into a a kiss. Alec wrapped an arm around Magnus's back and pulled the warlock's body tight against his own.

"Okay," Magnus gave in. "I want to take you somewhere extravagant. Somewhere you'll never forget. Somewhere you can't even imagine."

Alec shivered. Magnus's voice was going warm again. "I don't need all of that."

"That's why I want to give it to you. So, I'm going to step out to make a call. You should pick out some nice shirts, slacks if you have them but black jeans will do. And a swim suit." His whole face turned up into a grin. "Don't bother with pajamas."

* * *

"What do you think?" Magnus asked, ushering Alec into the room.

Alec took a deep breath. "You said extravagant."

"I did."

"We have very different definitions of extravagant."

Alec had seen hotel rooms. Demon deals gone bad, vampires posing as prostitutes. That sort of thing. The hotel part was more or less as he expected, just a hundred times nicer. There was a huge bed in the center of the room, with crisp white sheets invitingly turned down. Huge, fluffy pillows with little round mints on them. Night tables. Lamps. A soft rug. A dresser. The same sort of very square sofa that Magnus had in his loft, but in white. A little hallway that must have gone off to a bathroom.

But they were all contained in a big plastic bubble.

Underwater.

A hammerhead shark was cruising by. Alec walked to the see-through wall and set his hand against it. A school of small, brightly colored fish darted away from him.

Alec watched the shark go past and turned to look at Magnus. He looked strangely small and apprehensive.

"Do you like it?" He asked.

"What did this cost?"

"A favor I didn't have any other use for." He carried the bag next over to the dresser and glanced back at Alec. "Do you… not like it?"

Alec was still looking out though the plastic wall. The view was a little distorted where the plastic curved, and what he'd thought were a pair of little gold fish edging around the curve were, in fact, two gold fish longer than his arm.

"Alec?" Magnus asked again. "We can go somewhere else. We can go literally anywhere else."

The huge orange fish were nosing along the wall. Alec laughed when one of them bumped against the space right in front of him. "I… yeah. No. I don't want to go anywhere else. It's just…"

"Extravagant?" Magnus asked, hopefully.

Alec laughed again. "Yeah. Exactly." He walked over to Magnus and pulled him into a kiss. "I wasn't expecting anything like this. I love it."

Magnus relaxed. He set the bag down and snapped his fingers. Alec guessed, from the way it had flattened, that Magnus had magically unpacked it.

Alec set his hands at his boyfriend's waist. "So… what now?"

Magnus rocked closer to Alec and set his hands at the back of Alec's neck. "Dinner? I'm told the restaurant is excellent."

"Room service?" Alec suggested.

"I'll find the menu."

* * *

He was never tired with Magnus. That bone deep exhaustion he'd thought was just an integral part of who he was started to go away when Magnus was around. He'd told Magnus back at the Institute that he was happy and calm when they were together, but he hadn't done a good enough job of explaining just how important, shocking, revelatory that really was.

Alec also wished he'd been able to explain how, while he'd felt that sort of body suffusing happiness before, it was different with Magnus. Before, that happiness had all been in one place. Isolated from his other experiences.

The happiness he felt with Magnus came with him.

Laying in bed together, pleasantly full with some spicy noodle dish Magnus had picked out, sipping citrusy cocktails and using the guidebook from the nightstand to try and name all the different fish floating by— that was amazing.

But a text in the middle of a meeting. A phone call before bed when Alec slept at the Institute. Breakfast and a cup of coffee the mornings after he'd slept at Magnus's place. Getting Magnus to admit that he'd totally fabricated some incident in his supposedly sordid past.

Those were all things Alec could carry with him.

Tomorrow (or maybe the day after, Alec hadn't decided), he'd go back to the Institute. And people would stare and him and whisper at him. His future would still be in jeopardy.

But he'd still be happy.

He'd meant to say all of those things to Magnus before they'd started kissing.

But now they were both in their underwear, hard and panting and pressing their hips against each other, and it didn't seem like a good time to pin Magnus's hands to the mattress before they could pull Alec out of his underwear, and give a long speech about degrees of happiness.

In his clothes and his makeup he was glamorous, powerful. Like a king from an old painting, decked out in finery to show his status. Aloof and untouchable.

But like this, when he was Alec's, he was something else entirely.

"I'm going to buy you actual, sophisticated men's underwear sometime," Magnus breathed snapping the waistband of Alec's briefs before pulling them off.

Alec shook his head and tugged Magnus's much softer and more fitted underwear down his legs. "I don't think you are."

"Oh don't you?" Magnus moved underneath him. His body was intoxicating. All his little shimmies and and twists were charming when he was dressed but when you could see the way each muscle articulated its way through the movement. I almost made Alec forget what he was going to say.

"Nope," Alec responded, laying his hand flat to Magnus's stomach and sliding it up his body, around his neck and into his hair, gripping the strands between his fingers. Just like he'd wanted, Magnus shivered underneath him. "Because you keep saying that, and you haven't done it yet."

He dove down into a kiss, pulling in the sweet taste of the cocktail still on Magnus's lips, and the smell of the expensive shampoo he used- like earl grey tea and cut grass.

They'd learned each other so much in the last two months. Alec knew what would make Magnus moan and shiver and finally grab Alec and stop him from doing anymore.

Alec was already on his back, hand wrapped around both their cocks before he wondered if he should be nervous. Maybe he was, a little. Between kisses he was starting to notice a little bit of a flutter in his stomach. Just a little.

But there was nothing as Magnus reached for the bottle on the nightstand, and started to kiss his way down Alec's stomach.

They'd talked about this. After one of the first times they'd experienced that pause full of possibilities. They'd made decisions about positions and condoms and talked about how it might just… not work the first time.

Maybe it wasn't nerves. Maybe it was just the excitement of knowing what was going to come next as he watched Magnus kiss his way down his body, stopping at every rune on Alec's skin.

But the parabatai rune… when Magnus kissed that one something in Alec's stomach wrenched suddenly. Alec jumped and shivered.

Magnus hummed and did it again.

"Hey, no," Alec reached down. "Not that one."

Magnus looked down at the run on his hip more carefully. "Of course," he said, placing an apologetic kiss to the center of Alec's stomach. Alec brushed his hand over Magnus's hair.

And then… Magnus started.

The touch was weird.

He'd known it might be. It wasn't unpleasant just… so different from what Alec had expected. Again, he found himself grateful that Magnus had walked into his bedroom that first night, seen Alec naked and thinking he was ready for this, and refused to go too fast. Here, now, it was impossible to imagine how he would have felt about this kind of intimacy with Magnus's forever twisting, twirling, snapping fingers back on that first night.

Alec breathed deep, and looked up at the ceiling above him. The sun was setting now, the water over them was less of a bright clear blue. It was turning Navy now, and nearly black, in a spot past Magnus's head.

A twist of Magnus's fingers made him gasp, and the ocean and sky above him became much less interesting. Heat was building in his body again. He inched his legs a little further apart and threw back his head as something, the feeling or the pressure or the angle, something, changed.

"Magnus," Alec moaned. He was definitely nervous now, the thrum and twist in his stomach was revving up more and more with every spike of pleasure through his body.

"Ready?"

"Yeah, I think so. Yes. Please."

Magnus bolted up to Alec, burying himself in a kiss, then another and another, before he reached his hands down between them, and started to guide himself in.

Alec dropped out of the kiss for a moment, breathing steadily. He wanted to feel this, completely. All of it. The soft brush of the sheets on his back. Magnus's smooth skin over hard muscle. His lightly callused hand closed around Alec's shoulder. His warm breath on Alec's face.

He looked up at Magnus's face, open and observant. He looked past him, up into the blue, nearly black now water, silver fish darting through it like shooting stars. Glimmering lights suddenly gone as some big black something moved across the ceiling.

And still… that weird knotting and unknotting low in his stomach as he felt Magnus slowly, _slowly_ moving just a little bit deeper.

He caught his breath and pulled Magnus back into a kiss, just as the the pulse in his stomach turned sharp and twisted and painful…

He lost contact with the moment around him. The sheets were gone, the feeling of Magnus around him and almost inside him— gone. His skin burned and he saw a face in the fog, grey, but determined. Teeth grit. Stele out. Brow furrowed.

"Alec? Alec!" Magnus voice called him back. Alec reached out and grabbed him, tight around the shoulders.

"Jace."

Magnus's face froze, then burst forward into a nebula of hurt and shock. "What did you just-"

"No! No!" Alec said, crashing back from the moment of being overwhelmed by the parabatai bond, and finding himself very relieved that Magnus had pulled away from him when he started to fade away. The last thing he needed right now was to have said someone else's name with Magnus actually inside him.

"No," Alec said again for good measure, and pointed up. "Look, look up. Jace is on that ship."


	6. 6:Twenty One Again: Brooklyn Again

Lydia was terrifying when she was angry. She and Alec were in a meeting between with a Consul in Idris. The Consul had been screaming for 15 minutes, and while Lydia was getting flusher and flusher she had yet to raise her voice.

"If you think that I am a threat or a rebel, Consul, then _you_ have lost sight of the mission."

"YOU ARE IN DIRECT VIOLATION OF A DOZEN CLAVE LAWS!" The Consul shouted back at her. He was old and fat, wearing gear that didn't have a scratch on it. He was also slightly see-through, a projection floating just a little bit above the marble floor of Lydia's (former Alec's parent's) office. Even so, Alec could see he was nearly purple with rage. "We are Shadowhunters! We do not shelter downworlders—"

"No downworlder injured in defense of the innocent will be turned out of this Institute," Lydia asserted. "The Accords promised an alliance."

"The LAW-"

"I am well within the Law. Your signature is ON the Accords, Consul I've seen it. The New York Institute will defend its alliance with the downworlders who came to our aide."

"They defile the sacred—"

"You and I are still ALIVE, and the WORLD WAS NOT OVER RUN BY GREATER DEMONS, because the Lightwoods have made ties with the downworlders here!" Lydia bellowed, bringing her fist down on her desk so hard that everything on it rattled.

The Consul looked taken aback. Alec certainly was. The Consul's jaw worked, then clamped and finally, more quietly, just as angrily, he replied. "The last shadowhunter to defy the Clave was Valentine. Think, girl, about the footsteps you walk in."

"I am not a girl. I am the Interim Commander of the New York Institute," Lydia replied. "I am not Valentine. I returned the Mortal Cup to the Clave. I am not trying to take over, disperse, or ruin the Clave."

"But the Clave failed all of us in that battle" Alec cut in. "We have the dead and wounded to prove it. Valentine nearly opened up a portal to hell. Shadowhunters didn't save the world, the Seelie Court, the New York Wolf Pack, and Magnus Bane did."

"I do not care to hear you simper on about Magnus Bane, Lightwood," the Counselor wrinkled his nose in disgust.

"Don't insult my Lieutenant, Consul," Lydia barked.

Catarina Loss, who up to this point and been sitting in a corner observing, only occasionally lifting a finger to adjust the projection she was casting all the way to Idris, finally chimed in. "I would also advise that you do not insult Magnus Bane. He has great power, and many friends."

The projection of the Consul looked from Catarina to Alec. "I've heard all about that, I assure you."

Alec was still recovering from the battle. He was exhausted. More than anything, he just wanted to lie down. But this had to be done first.

"Then hear about this Consul— in Alicante, you have the demon towers. But every other institute in the world relies on Warlocks for protection from demons." He held his hand up, ticking points along his fingers. "They cast wards, heal demon wounds, create talismans, weapons, and a whole host of other magical objects. Also, only a warlock can create a portal."

"Thank you, Lightwood, I understand what a warlock can do."

"Then understand a world where Warlocks stop selling this power to the Clave," Catarina said quietly. "No more magic for Idris."

The Consul turned an even deeper shade of purple. "They wouldn't. Squeezing money of out the Clave has made too many warlocks rich."

"Warlocks live a long time, Consul," Alec said. "They know how to prepare for a rainy day. And they can wait out the Clave's stubbornness longer than Clave can wait out their own powerlessness." Alec smirked. "Much longer."

The Consul turned back to Lydia. He fought to speak for several moments before words finally poured out of him. "YOU ARE IN DEFIANCE OF THE LAW! YOUR COMMAND IS NOT SANCTIONED AND WE WILL HAVE A LOYAL SHADOWHUNTER SENT TO REPLACE YOU."

"Wish him luck getting through customs at the airport," Lydia replied. She gestured at Catarina, who dismissed the projection with a flick of her wrist.

Everyone in the room deflated a little. Lydia paced back and forth along the edge of her desk and leaned heavily against it. Alec moved to the chair behind the desk and collapsed into the leather covered cushions.

"Gut check?" Lydia asked, glancing at Alec. "Have we gone completely rogue?"

"Well," Alec replied. "We just told one of the highest ranking members of the Clave to go fuck himself."

"But still doing the right thing?"

"Yeah," Alec and Catarina replied in unison.

"The Accords can't stay an empty agreement," Catarina said.

"And our laws have to acknowledge that the world changes," Alec added.

"No one's come to arrest you yet," Catarina offered. "And we can't keep every single Warlock from refusing the Clave's money forever, but we can dry up the market very badly for a while. Shadowhunters will die when young warlocks make mistakes. Refusing magic to Idris is not an empty threat."

"And basically the only thing they can do right now is have someone from the Los Angeles Institute drive here and try to take over. And we can deal with that," Alec said with a yawn.

Lydia looked at him, he glared back. He was sick of people asking him how he felt. He was getting better.

"How is Magnus?" Lydia asked.

"Better," Alec replied.

"Good." Lydia nodded, and glanced back at the space the Consul had been standing in a few moments ago, then back to Alec. "Okay. Well. I need to let you leave. You said you had some kind of appointment?"

Alec nodded. "Are you sure you can spare me for tonight?"

Lydia pulled some papers off the edge of the desk and started flipping through them. "Yeah. Yeah. I think that was the last big meeting of the day. Now it's just calls and fire messages and scheduling. I'm gonna work on a letter to send out to the Institutes, make sure everyone knows what happened," She yawned too. "I need you to meet the Vampires with me tomorrow night though, so… you know. Keep a block of time free."

Alec nodded and worked his way up out of the chair. "Yeah. Just text me the time when you figure it out." He walked to the office door, stifling yet another yawn. "And don't forget to eat something today, alright?"

Lydia smiled and shrugged, and Alec walked out the door.

* * *

"Hey!" Isabelle called out as Alec finally peeled back the glamour and found the group in the park. "It's the Great Reformer!"

"Shut up," Alec called back, with no real feeling. Jocelyn had called him that first. Isabelle had picked it up, and if he was being completely honest with himself, he liked the title. But he didn't want anyone to know that.

"Has Lydia made any of the Consuls cry yet?" Jace asked, twirling the sword in his grip around his hand.

"No, but one more meeting with Consul Aldertree like the one we had today and I think he might have an aneurysm," Alec said. "We dropped the Warlock Strike Bomb today."

"Jesus," Jace said.

"Yeah. So… if they find a way to come and arrest us, you guys are in charge of rescuing me."

"You can count on us!" Simon cried out.

Alec gave him a nasty look, the vampire didn't seem to notice.

"Okay. Enough politics. I've got a date tonight, let's do some training."

Clary handed her sword to Isabelle, Jace handed his to Alec.

Alec and Isabelle went through a few sequence, first at full speed, then half, then slow, then handed their swords to Clary and Simon.

"Okay, the grip is good, don't hold it up so high," Jace corrected Simon. "You're trying to hit _her_ , not her sword."

"It's so weird to be doing this in the middle of Central Park," Simon said. "I mean, not bursting into flame in the sunlight, for one thing, but I keep feeling like we could be arrested at any moment."

"We're invisible," Isabelle said.

"Do you need to see us do the sequence again, or do you think you have it?" Alec asked, cutting off this conversation. He'd agreed to help train Simon, but only if he was going to take this seriously.

Simon shrugged. "One way to find out."

"I like the new, rebellious you, Alec," Jace said as they watched Simon and Clary try to reenact the thrust, parry, thrust sequence Alec and Isabelle had just shown them. "I can't believe you've spent two weeks openly antagonizing the Clave."

"If Luke, Jocelyn, and Lydia hadn't stopped the Clave from following the rules to the letter, and if the Clave had kept ignoring you, and if I hadn't been in the right place as the right time, demons would have overrun the earth." Alec replied. "Fuck the Clave."

Jace laughed. "I bet it was still hard for you to say that though."

"It's getting easier everyday. I'm pretty bitter about how close to dead I got on that boat, and everything they tried to blame me for afterward."

Alec was slowly beginning to realize that he would never forgive the Clave. Not after two months of whispers and sneers after the wedding. Not after two weeks of pomposity and fighting with rigid old morons about the dangers of their stupid fucking rules. Valentine's methods had been wrong, his hate had been wrong, but the Clave had to be remade. The Law had to be rewritten.

And Alec and Lydia were going to be the ones to do it.

The battle on Valentine's ship had been two weeks ago, on cold, foggy Saturday evening. Terrible fighting conditions. The huge cut on Jace's thigh from a demon that had scurried away too fast to identify was only now starting to knit together, and the bandages still stank whenever they had to be changed. He'd only gotten out of the Silent Brother's care a few days ago.

The gashes across Simon's wrists and neck were still visible. Light pink and fading. Izzy still had gauze wrapped all the way up her left forearm from when she'd been burned. Clary had nearly drowned.

Alec had wound up in one of the life rafts with Magnus, lending his strength to his boyfriend while Magnus tried to close the entrance to the Demon realm until neither of them had any strength left to give.

Alec had woken up on Wednesday morning, slowly regaining consciousness to the sound of Jocelyn Fairchild and his mother quietly talking about what a headstrong baby he had been and his mother crying. It had, Alec gleaned as their voices floated around him, taken six hours for the search parties to find the life boat, eddying around in a big circle, with Magnus and Alec lying in the bottom of it, nearly dead, and still holding hands.

Magnus didn't wake up until Thursday night.

"Yeah," Jace sighed. "I'm not thrilled about that myself. Still.I appreciate you taking out your anti-Clave anger this way. I owe Simon. Big time."

"You know, you did let him drink your blood. And now one slip up from him and all the kingdoms and constituencies of vampires the world over could come knocking on your door trying to become Daylighters themselves. You're not teaching him to fight because you owe him. You're doing it because your girlfriend asked you to."

Jace grinned. "Yeah, sure, fair enough. But he's still the reason we're together."

Alec fought an urge to roll his eyes. He was happy for Jace and Clary. He was glad they were so happy together. But all Simon had done to bring them together was google "dna test manhattan". They'd bought a kit that came in a little cardboard box at a CVS in midtown, mailed in a couple cotton swabs, and gotten an answer back in two days. If Jace was going to get starry eyed over something, he should do it over mundane science, not the vampire's ability to use use his 3G service.

"Hey, Alec, I've actually got another favor to ask you."

"Sure," Alec sighed. "We'll go teach runes at an art school. Start taking tourists into the Seelie court. Whatever."

Clary and Simon finished the sequence and looked over at Jace and Alec for their approval.

"Better," Alec called to them. "Still not good. Do it again."

"I was hoping you could put in a good word with Jocelyn for me," Jace said seriously, as Clary and Simon moved back into position. "Get her to warm up to me."

"Why me?" Alec asked.

"Because Jocelyn likes you."

"Date a downworlder instead of her daughter. She'll like you too." Alec fought back a yawn. "Parents are like that."

Clary and Simon did the sequence a few more times, and again, looked to Alec and Jace when they finished.

"I think we've got it!" Clary called.

"You don't. Again."

He saw Clary and Simon grumbling to each other as they returned to a sparring stance.

"You're not going to go easy on them at all?" Jace asked. "You know who you sound like, right?"

"I know exactly who I sound like," Alec yawned. "But Mom is right about some things. And we're fighting a two fronted war now. They have to learn." He yawned again, so wide his jaw cracked.

Alec was aware of Jace watching him, biting his lip so he didn't say anything. Alec was getting better. If he needed to rest, he would. They had talked about Jace not mother-henning him back to the brink of death. Alec needed everyone to stop worrying about him so damn much.

"Is Magnus getting any better?"

"Yeah. He's fine. He started getting some magic back on Friday, I think that helped a lot. He can't really use it, he's still… recharging, I guess. But he was worried it might not come back for weeks, so he's really relieved."

"Is he still wearing the sunglasses?"

Alec groaned. "Yes. Yes he is and it's driving me crazy. It's ridiculous."

"He knows you don't care, right? About his warlock mark?"

"I can't think of any more ways to tell him. I mean really, how weird could his eyes possibly be? They're just eyes." He yawned again, shifting from foot to foot. "To be honest with you, I was really worried that he'd have a tail."

Jace snorted with laughter.

"It's a pretty common mark. And it's… you know… yuck."

"And you're sure he doesn't have one?" Jace asked. There was… a sound in his voice when he asked the question. Like he wanted to tease Alec but wasn't sure he was allowed.

It was weird. So much had happened while he was gone. Alec's life had changed so much while he was gone.

"Uh…" Alec started. "Yeah. Very sure."

"Made the uh," Jace cleared his throat. "Full inspection, then?"

Alec dropped his head back and held in a frustrated groan. "Whatever you're trying to ask me, just ask it."

Jace cleared his throat again. "Have you guys had sex?"

Alec's frustrated groan broke free. "I don't know."

Jace looked at him, brows furrowed for a long time. "Okay. I personally have not had sex with a warlock, but I can't imagine how you wouldn't be able to tell."

Alec did his best to summarize the night in the hotel in the least descriptive way he could manage.

"Wow," Jace managed when he'd finished. "You really do love me, huh?"

"Shut up."

"Well, what about since he woke up? I mean, I know you both drained out most of your life force, but… you've slept at his place every night since he was moved back to it."

"And now we're back to the problem of the sunglasses. He doesn't want me to see his eyes, I'm not going to sleep with him when might not be able to see me, and…" Alec hadn't told Jace the truth about what Magnus had done in the lifeboat. Only a few people knew. It was a secret Alec had to keep for himself a little longer. "He really overdid it during the battle. He's better, but he was really…" Alec swallowed a lump in his throat.

Jace didn't make him go on. "Hooves, I think. I think I'd have trouble getting over hooves."

Alec nodded, forced a laugh, and yawned, broadly, again. "Okay. I gotta sit down. I'll tap Izzy in."

Jace shot him a sympathetic smile and Alec ambled over to where his sister was sitting.

"You okay?" She asked.

"Just tired. Life force grows back slowly. You're up."

Alec lowered himself gingerly down into the grass. He knew this was going to pass. Feeling exhausted all the time, getting winded from minor exertion. Waking up with aching muscles and a headache. When he got frustrated with his slow recovery, all he could do was keep repeating Catarina's words to himself. Everything she'd told him about what it was like to recover from giving someone so much of yourself. How it hurt, and ached, and healed. Just like love.

Izzy and Jace joined Clary and Simon and started walking them through sword angles. Alec leaned back, watching them for a few moments before giving up and laying down in the grass.

He felt himself sliding away into sleep, and decided not to fight back.

* * *

Alec unlocked Magnus's front door and walked into the loft. He opened his mouth to announce that he was there, but stopped. He glanced around, checking to see if Magnus was somewhere in the main room.

Not seeing him anywhere, Alec set the bag of take-out on the drink cart, tip-toed across the narrow path between the drink cart and the couch, picked up the end table, and very carefully set it down a few inches to the right of where it had been before.

"Magnus?" Alec called out. "You awake?"

After a few moments, he heard Magnus's bedroom door open.

"Alexander! How was training?" Magnus asked as he appeared in the hall. He was dressed. That was a good sign, even if he hadn't done anything with his hair. He'd paired dark wash jeans with one of his jewel-tone silk shirts with the glitzy stuff around the collar. The look was completed with huge, round, black sunglasses. He kind of looked like a fly.

"It was good," Alec said. "I think we can make the vampire into a fighter."

Magnus walked toward Alec briskly, and just as briskly, walked into the end table with a crack of knee against wood.

"Oh! Fuck," Magnus hissed, doubling over to rub his knee and confirming Alec's suspicion that Magnus could only get around his apartment with the sunglasses on because he knew where everything was.

"I've never heard you swear before."

"Alexander, I can swear fluently, in hundreds of languages, including dozens that were dead before you were born."

"Okay," Alec replied, trying to convey his eyeroll with his voice, since he knew for sure now that Magnus couldn't see him. "I picked up Thai food from that place you like."

"Thank you."

"I'll dish up. I got you those egg roll things too."

"Did you move any more of my furniture?" Magnus asked with a little bit of a sneer.

"Why don't you take the sunglasses off and find out?" Alec replied as he carried the take out bag into the kitchen and took out plates, glasses and silverware.

Magnus's only reply was a disgusted scoff as he slowly made his to the couch, tapping one foot out in front of him like a cane. Alec watched him for a couple seconds, then shook his head and started spooning Penang Curry and Pad Woo Sen between two plates, which he carried out to the coffee table.

"How are you feeling?" Alec asked as he walked back into the kitchen. He grabbed a little glass dish of lemon slices out of the fridge, dropped a few in each of the glasses.

"Better," Magnus replied. "Finished a lovely novel today. Catarina came over for lunch, a very sexy description of you making a Consul nearly burst into flames with rage, and a glass of wine, which made me fall back asleep, and then I cleaned up around the apartment— without magic— because I was expecting you."

Alec brought the glasses to the drink cart and filled each of them with seltzer.

"And then you hit me with an end table," Magnus went on, aggrieved. "And now I'm thinking it wasn't worth the effort."

"Maybe I should pour a little gin in here," Alec huffed. "Knock you right back out."

"No thank you," Magnus said. "But help yourself."

"That's alright. It'll knock me out too." Alec glanced over at the couch. Magnus had moved off of it and down to the floor, so that the surface of the coffee table was at shoulder height, and the plate was right under his face. _Goddammit._ Alec thought. _He can't see the plate_. _It's too dark in here._

Glasses in hand, Alec walked to the dimmer switch by the door and turned the lights all the way up, grabbed his bag from where he'd dropped it when he came in, then finally joined Magnus in the living room on the floor between the couch and the coffee shop.

"Hey," he said, finally giving Magnus quick hello-kiss.

"Hey. How are _you_ feeling?"

Alec shrugged. "Still tired, but better. Jace and Izzy and everyone let me sleep in the grass at the park for like two hours before some kid hit me with a frisbee. I'm frustrated more than anything. It's been a week and a half. It's a long time to feel like an invalid."

"Don't I know it." Magnus sighed happily as he bit into his egg roll. "How are things at the Institute?"

"I thought Catarina told you," Alec said.

"I like the way you tell it."

Alec scoffed, but gave Magnus a quick overview of the meeting and Lydia finally losing her temper.

"I would have paid to see that," Magnus laughed. "I always liked that girl."

"Yeah," Alec agreed.

A few minutes of restful silence passed. Alec snagged Magnus's last egg roll off his plate without him noticing.

"Hey, so I brought something," Alec said, opening his bag and digging through it. "I thought, after all the excitement recently, I'd give action movies another chance." He pulled out DVD case and held it up. Magnus turned his head toward Alec and leaned in close, trying to see what it was.

Alec set the DVD case on the coffee table, then reached out and gently grasped the left stem of the sunglasses.

"Alec!" In his hurry to grab Alec's hand, Magnus dropped his fork. It clattered loudly along the table. Alec didn't pull the glasses away. He just let his hand rest there.

"What do you think I'm going to say?" Alec asked gently. "What do you think I'm going to do? I've seen warlocks before. I'm not going to be horrified."

"Why do you want to see them?"

Alec sighed. "You're in the Codex, you know. There are plenty of files on you back at the Institute. If wanted to see your mark, I could type your name into a search. It would take me less than a minute."

"So why don't you just do that?"

"Because I don't want to see them. I want you to show them to me," Alec moved toward Magnus, so that their thighs touched. "I want you to trust me enough to show them to me."

Magnus didn't let go of Alec's hand. He pulled his bottom lip into his mouth and let it slide all the way back out under his teeth.

"Come on. I haven't seen your face, while you've been conscious, since the battle. Please."

Magnus let go, and Alec slid the glasses off his face, to reveal familiar dark brown eyes, ringed with black eyeliner and a little bit of silver shadow. He looked into Alec's eyes for a moment, then looked out at the coffee table. He grabbed the DVD and glanced at the cover.

"Star Wars. Really?"

"You said you liked it."

Magnus shrugged. "I think I did. I don't remember."

Alec turned his attention back to his plate. "You can't watch it with the sunglasses on and you can't keep the glamour up all night."

"No," Magnus delicately plucked the glasses back up off the coffee table. "I probably can't stay awake for the whole movie either." He slid the glasses back on.

"Me neither. But I'll make you a deal."

Even with the sunglasses covering the top two-thirds of his face, Alec could tell Magnus was raising his eyebrows at him.

"We'll finish dinner, I'll set up the movie and turn off all the lights, you can take the damn glasses off. We can spoon on the couch and I won't look, okay? I promise."

Magnus tapped his fork on his plate and took a sip of his water. "I hate the word spoon."

888

About forty minutes into the movie, with Magnus warm against his chest, Alec was starting to drift off. Judging by Magnus's deep, steady breathing, he was already asleep.

Alec considered just closing his eyes, falling asleep on the couch and dealing with the stiffness and aches in the morning, since Magnus's comfortable, luxurious bed just felt too far away.

"Alec?" Magnus whispered. "Are you still awake?"

"Almost."

"Let's go to bed. We can finish this over coffee in the morning."

"Yeah."

"Go ahead. I'll be right with you."

Alec kissed the back of Magnus's head, and Magnus moved, letting Alec get up and keeping his face turned away. Alec kept his promise not to look at Magnus, and loped across the loft to the bathroom. He tapped the left side of the mirror and it popped out, revealing the two small shelves of Magnus's medicine cabinet that had been set aside for him. He grabbed his toothbrush and toothpaste (Magnus used cinnamon flavored toothpaste and Alec couldn't stand it) and squeezed a pea sized dot at the head of the brush while he looked at himself in the mirror.

His hair was flat and a little frizzy. He hadn't had the energy to deal with it lately. But other than that he looked better. He was less pale, his cheeks were a little fuller than they had been. The circles under his eyes were still pretty pronounced, but again, better than they had been.

The bathroom door opened as Alec brushed. He watched in the mirror as Magnus walked in wearing his pajamas… and no sunglasses. He gave Alec a small smile, then joined him at the mirror, retrieving his own toothbrush from his side of the medicine cabinet, his make up remover and cotton pads, and a little tube of face soap. Their eyes met in the mirror as Magnus brushed his teeth. Alec's hazel, and Magnus's gold with slitted pupils.

They were strange, Alec thought, but not in a way that made Alec… think about how strange they were.

Alec spit into the sink, filled one of the small silver cups by the sink with water, rinsed, and spit again. Magnus did the same.

"Well. What do you think?" Magnus asked.

"Your eyeshadow doesn't match," Alec replied with a yawn. "Well… not match… you know. Go. You need different color eyeshadow."

Magnus snorted. "My eyeshadow is what sticks out to you?"

Alec shrugged. "Yeah."

He squeezed Magnus's arm as he passed him on the way to the bedroom. Undressing was such a chore he almost couldn't convince himself to get into his pajamas, but another fun side effect of being low on life force was that it could be hard to stay warm. The clothes he kept here were in the top drawer of Magnus's dresser. He pulled out the soft cotton pajama bottoms Magnus had gotten him, and a clean white tee shirt, put them on, and climbed into bed just as Magnus came in to join him.

Magnus arranged himself on his side of the bed for longer than usual, adjusting his pillows and smoothing his blankets.

"It's not that I thought you would react badly," he said quietly.

Alec pulled his foggy brain back from unconsciousness. Magnus was using his 'serious discussion' voice.

"Thank you," Alec replied, then waited for Magnus to find whatever else he needed to say.

"But a lot of people have. A lot of people do," He made a sound between a sigh and a laugh. "Camille used to pretend to pull a string when she was annoyed with me. Your mother brought me a glass of juice while I was in the sick bay at the Institute and you should have seen the way she looked at me," he sighed. "I don't like them and I mostly use them to intimidate people."

"She brought you juice?" Alec asked, not bothering to hide his shock.

"Maybe Lydia made her do it," Magnus suggested.

Alec didn't want to have this discussion right now. He wanted to sleep. But if he didn't bring it up now, when would he?

"My mother's feelings about you are really complicated."

Magnus scoffed. "I'm sure I have a good grip on how she feels about my corrupting influence."

Alec moved close enough to Magnus to set his head on the warlock's chest. "Look, I know you have a long history with my parents. I know there are things you haven't told me about them. And my mother is… harsh. But she loves me. She wants what's best for me. We just have very different opinions about what that is."

"Okay."

He could end it there. He could pretend that's all it is.

But he can't.

"She knows what you did."

"Magically sucked out most of her son's life force after withholding information from her precious Clave?"

Alec turned his head down, talking into the silky fabric of Magnus's pajamas. "She found us. Her and Catarina Loss."

Magnus's whole body stiffened underneath Alec.

"She's a very proud woman. She never admits she's wrong until it's way too late. I know… I know what she is. I know how she feels about downworlders and rule breakers and rebellion," Alec wondered where his spring of sympathy for a woman who had spent two months making him feel like dirt for being happy came from, but kept going. "And she… had a very fixed opinion of what was going on between us."

Magnus made a noise that was unmistakably disgusted.

"But she was there when Catarina jumped into the life boat, and broke the spell you'd cast. And when my mother started demanding to know what you'd done to me… Catarina told her. How you'd cast a spell so that after we passed out, your life force would keep me alive. Until you ran out of it."

"Alec… how long have you known about that?"

"Lydia told me after I'd been awake for a while on Wednesday."

"Why?"

Alec lifted his head, intending to look Magnus in the eye while he said this, but then realized he couldn't.

"No one would let me go see you when I woke up," He told Magnus's collarbone. "Clary knew where you were. She and Izzy helped me get to your room, and when I got there you looked so… you know. Dead." He wished he was explaining this better. He felt like he was screwing this up so badly. "And that first time I let you take on my energy, when we were healing Luke, you bounced back so much faster than I did. Catarina kept promising you'd be okay. I obviously didn't believe her. Lydia came to your room and I thought she was going to send me back to mine, but she sat with me for a while and she told me. She said she thought it would help me. "

"Who knows about that?" Magnus asked.

"Catarina. My mother. Lydia. Me." Alec yawned. "And don't think we're not going to talk about you deciding you could just sacrifice yourself for me like that." He yawned again. "I'm really angry with you. I just… can't stay awake long enough to yell at you."

Magnus finally slid down into all the way into bed. "Okay. I'll let you yell at me in the morning."

Alec moved closer to him, kissed him and replied. "Good. I'm gonna do that."

* * *

Alec woke up slowly, drifting between a dream about a cold ocean and the reality of Magnus's warm body wrapped around him, his boyfriend's warm breath rolling over his neck. He wriggled back against Magnus, trying to escape the phantom cold until he heard Magnus sigh, and felt Magnus's arm tightening around him.

"Are you awake?" Magnus whispered softly before kissing the back of Alec's neck.

His voice was low, and a little gruff. It finally pulled Alec away from the last vestiges of his unpleasant dream.

Magnus's hand was tight around Alec's stomach, with his fingertips waiting at the waistband of Alec's pajamas. Alec pushed himself back again, just a little and realized that he could feel how hard Magnus was where they were pressed together.

"I am now," he responded, gasping as Magnus kissed his neck and slid his hand under Alec's pajamas.

They hadn't done this since before the battle, that perfect night interrupted.

Alec melted into Magnus's hand, his lips, his body instantly as Magnus started to touch him. He let everything but the feeling of Magnus's body against and around his fade away, until just the touch wasn't enough.

He turned himself around. For a moment, he looked into Magnus's eyes, his real eyes, and then he brought his lips to Magnus's with a contented sigh. He loved how Magnus could do this to him so easily. A touch, a kiss, sometimes just a grin before Alec's body was going warm and liquid. He loved the way the quiet happiness he felt around Magnus got so sharp and focused, but never overwhelming in these moments.

Magnus's clothes started to get in the way of all the places Alec wanted to touch him. He slipped his hand under Magnus's tunic, and found where the laces were tied at the front of his pajama pants. As always, trying to kiss Magnus and untie his pajamas at the same time was a struggle.

"Magnus," Alec growled, pulling hard at the string.

"No magic," Magnus reminded him breathlessly.

Alec groaned and pulled out of the kiss. He threw the covers back off of their bodies and Magnus moved on top of him easily, kissing him deeply and pressing his hips down against Alec's before he lifted himself up and pulled his tunic over his head.

Alec wriggled out of his tee shirt. His hands dropped to the strings at the front of Magnus's pajamas and worked at the knot with increasing frustration.

"You've got to be kidding me," Alec hissed, as he continued to fail to untie the knot.

Magnus pushed Alec's hands away, and after his own few moments of struggle, finally got the tie undone. He rolled to his side to slip out of the pajama bottoms, Alec did the same, and then, finally, mercifully, they were naked and pressed together.

Alec had slept in Magnus's bed every night for the last week and a half, but between both of them still recovering from the battle and everything still happening at the institute, they hadn't done much more than sleep in it. Alec was shocked at the way he could suddenly _feel_ the lack of Magnus's touch. Those two empty weeks, after that _almost night_ , covered his body like dust.

Magnus reached between them, and Alec threw his head back at the touch.

It wasn't going to be enough. They lead dangerous lives, the two of them. Anything could happen to either of them at any time. Alec couldn't live with almost any longer.

"Magnus?" He panted against Magnus's lips.

"What is it?"

"I want you."

"I'm all yours."

"No, I mean now. Let's do it. For real this time."

Suddenly, Alec wasn't being kissed anymore. The warmth of Magnus's chest against his was gone. He opened his eyes and found Magnus looking down at him, eyes shadowed in doubt.

"Like this?" Magnus asked, a note of incredulity in his voice.

Alec blushed. He didn't want to have the "on top" discussion again. They'd done that part. He was sure, and he didn't want to explain again. "Yeah, how else?" he answered. "Come on. We talked about this."

Magnus's eyes narrowed, then went wide, and Alec realized that he'd misunderstood.

He grabbed Magnus's face, a little harder than he'd meant to, and pulled him close. "I. Don't. Care," he said slowly and clearly. "I don't care about your mark. I don't care." He kissed Magnus, hard and repeated, "I don't care." Then, feeling hot and desperate and daring, added, "Fuck me."

Magnus dove back into the kiss. He didn't even pull away to scrabble through the nightstand drawer, and with only a couple quick pauses, Alec felt Magnus's fingers between his legs.

It was different than last time. Before, there had been an all night ramp up of touching and kissing and undressing slowly, one piece of clothing at a time. There was an edge to it now that hadn't been there before. A desperation. Maybe from getting so close only to be denied. Maybe that was just what happened when you nearly died.

It was faster and easier this time too, now that Alec knew what to expect. He felt less like part of him was sitting in his head, watching what was happening. He could just enjoy it now. And then, again, as though no time had passed in between, Magnus was grabbing a condom and kissing him.

"Ready?"

"Yeah."

Alec realized, at Magnus moved into him, that he didn't actually know what to expect. His whole life, there had been a road map. Hold the sword like this, nock an arrow like that. There had always been a sequence to memorize, a form to perfect.

And now here he was, with his boyfriend moving into him like he was precious and fragile, and there was no map at all. No direction for this strange, vulnerable thing that refused to go the way it was supposed to.

Alec had a vague idea that this was just supposed to happen… start, be the thing that everyone talked about, and then end.

But it wasn't like that.

They had to stop and start a few times. Switch positions. Magnus nearly elbowed Alec in the face when the both moved the wrong direction at the same time. But eventually, the pieces came together. They found a position, an angle, a speed together. They moved together, they panted and kissed and made ridiculous sounds together, until, trying to deny it until he couldn't anymore, Alec was too sore to keep going.

They stopped.

Alec didn't see how Magnus discarded the condom. Maybe he would ask later. They finished each other off with their hands, like they'd done dozens of times by now.

And then the whole ridiculous, perfect, awkward, wonderful mess was over.

Alec set his forehead to Magnus's chest and laughed.

"What?" Magnus asked. His fingertips chased a line up and down Alec's spine.

"Nothing. I just… I didn't think…" he pressed his forehead harder against Magnus's chest, unable to stop smiling. "I didn't think that losing my virginity would be like that. Not in a bad way just…" Alec lifted his head and pressed a quick kiss to Magnus's lips. "Sorry. I'm not laughing at you…"

Magnus's face was open and happy and amused. Alec couldn't stop himself from kissing him again.

"Was it a good first time?" Magnus asked. His fingers made their way up Alec's neck, into his hair.

"Yeah," Alec replied. "Was it for—" he stopped, realizing too late that it was a silly question.

But Magnus just smiled again. "Yeah. It was a good first time for me too." He turned, so that he and Alec were pressed chest to chest. "We could have a hundred first times, you know. A thousand."

"Yeah?" Alec asked. "Like how?"

"Oh, I have my personal favorites," Magnus sighed. "The first time you realize you know _everything_ that turns your lover on, that's always good. The first time in a new home is always exciting. With you, I have to admit I'm particularly looking forward to the first time in the shower, and the first time in the Institute."

Alec laughed, and was shocked at how loud the sound that burst out of him was. "I'm not having sex with you at the Institute."

"I love a challenge, my dear," Magnus replied. "We'll have to cover up your poor fish. Wouldn't want him getting the wrong idea."

Alec laughed while Magnus listed off a few more options, some of which Alec wrote off immediately and some that made him warm with anticipation.

"Well," Alec said, pressing a kiss to Magnus's pleasantly stubbled jaw. "Well, I guess we'll just have to keep doing it. Work our way down that list."

"I guess we will," Magnus sighed. "I seem to remember promising you coffee and star wars in the morning. I may even feel good enough for a mimosa."

"Coffee, for me," Alec said, turning over to grab his phone. "I've got to go into the Institute this afternoon. Oh, shit."

The home screen of his phone was a list of texts from Lydia, Jace, and Catarina, all lined up under the time. It was 2:30 in the afternoon and everyone in the Institute seemed to need something from him.

"What's wrong?"

"We overslept, we really overslept." Alec sighed. "I have to go to the Institute. I'm sorry."

"You're a very important man, Alexander, and duty calls," Magnus replied.

Alec got up and started to get dressed. "I feel bad, running off to work right after this."

"It's fine. I understand, and you're coming back tonight."

"Yeah," Alec promised. "I am." He pulled on his jeans and texted Lydia back first, letting her know he'd be on the train in ten minutes, pulled on his shirt before he texted Jace and was looking for his belt as he texted Catarina. "Maybe we can order in from that Indian place? The one that makes the Masala with those gigantic shrimp?"

"I'd like that," Magnus said, climbing out of bed. Still naked, he followed Alec out to the living room, where Alec snagged his bag from beside the couch.

They stopped at the door, and Alec pulled Magnus into a deeper goodbye kiss than usual, trying to convey how much he wished he could stay, and how bad he felt about having sex for the first time and then immediately running off.

"Alec?" Magnus asked as he pulled out of the kiss.

"Yeah?"

"Maybe tonight could be the first time after we say 'I love you'."

Magnus looked up at Alec with that painfully open expression as he said it. The one he gave Alec when he was saying something he hadn't said in centuries.

After a stunned second, Alec kissed him again.

"Yeah. It can."


End file.
